Soreness-Inducing Art and Other Challenges

So, we're hammering our metal bowls. It's pretty neat. We start off with a completely flat sheet of metal, and essentially hammer it until it's a bowl.

There's a little technique involved, but that's basically it.

It's kind of awesome, though. You have to hammer every inch of the metal, overlapping your strokes slightly, in a circular pattern from the inside out.

And then you do that 10 times. Or at least until the bowl is 3 inches deep.

There's also 4 of us in the class sharing one anvil.

Luckily in between each round you have to bouge it on the mushroom stake to make it not an oval, hammer the inside on the sand bag to make it not lumpy, anneal it to make it hammerable again, pickle it to make it not covered in firescale, and cross peen the edges to thicken them.

Then you can hammer again.

So the whole 3 people at once thing just happened that one time.

Well, we do all have about 8 more rounds left, so it'll actually probably happen again.

Ze hammer! Polished by me and marked with my initials!

Ze mushroom stake! For ze bouging!

Ze pickle! For ze cleaning! And also for ze bowls to get to know one another...

Ze example bowl! To make us feel bad!

Though I think mine looks pretty good :P

Sort of lumpy on the inside, but that's okay.

Anyway, one of the bad things about hammering (and how many bad things could there be?!) is it makes your arms TIRED. Like, you can only hammer in 30-second intervals. It's really awful. And then your arm is all sore, and your thumb hurts from holding the metal in place and it never ever ends.

Also something that never ends...

Hollowing out giant, delicate ceramic women sculptures.

It's a mess. And pretty much has to be completed by next week. And then it has to dry, which takes forever, before it can even go in the kiln. Or else it will explode! Which is bad.

On a positive note, when I was walking to Typography, I saw my dudes in the display case!

Only one of them though. And the word Dizzy, but that's okay!

Speaking of Typography, I have revamped my stationary!

Only slightly, but it looks a lot better!

Pretty much I just added a strip of wood grain to everything, and made the inside of the envelope, but it has such a different feel to it that matches the restaurant much better.

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