View From The Pines
Artist: Paoletta De Filippis
"As an artist who enjoys working with clay, I let my hands guide me through the making process, and in many ways, I see my hands as being an extension of my thought process; allowing me to touch, hold, motion, and build my ideas into reality. The more I become familiar with the tools and clay body I'm using, the more intuitive my movements become.
Similarly, for the past four years I've been very interested in glaze chemistry. Through repeated experimentation I began developing a familiarity with different glaze materials which has enabled me to formulate a hypothesis on the behaviour of a mixture prior to mixing and testing it. What I found equally fascinating is the scientific process and the importance of recording the seemingly simple/intuitive decisions that are made during the testing process.
This art piece was designed to explore how we use measurements to replicate our intuitive decisions. The scale and graduated cylinder in this piece are used to depict how we use specific gravity to control glaze viscosity. Conversely, the three fingers are used to replicate the action of dipping our finger in the glaze bucket to determine intuitively the same water to glaze mixture, which can affect the final outcome."