2^nd Year Personal Research Project

You must think about the processes that you were introduced to through the workshops this year (Decorative, Glaze, Plaster, etc.). Select a maker whose work you admire who applies a selected range of these processes.

Introduce us briefly to their work and their concepts, but the main focus of your Research and presentation should be on the technical aspects of Materials and Processes.

Delivery: You must put together a 4 slide illustrated Powerpoint Presentation to present your research verbally to your peers. Those attending should be left with a clear understanding of the techniques as applied by that particular maker and how the effects can be achieved if they were to apply the techniques to their own work.

You must also present some practical samples that you have made as part of your research project (test tiles or other, related to the content) that add further understanding for your peers.

Eva Hild is a ceramic artist she is part of the new generation of Swedish art craft and design makers exploring the boundaries between art, craft and design.

A graduate of Göteborg University's School of Design and Crafts, Sweden, Eva Hild has exhibited widely and is represented in important private and public collections.

Eva hild work ranges from ceramic sculptural pieces, wall tiles, silver pewter objects to large bronze, concert, snow or aluminium sculptures for public area.

        

  Building her large scale sculpture pieces using coils of clay, it takes weeks for her to coil and scrape her sculptures Hild's sculptures grow slowly, contemplatively, and the work cannot be hurried along. She soothes out the seams and rounds off the forms using a metal scraper the clay is smooth, malleable and leathery which enables her to produce complex forms

Through hand-building, Hild gradually builds up her sculptures, change the direction
and make the shape as a hole connect, making the forms veer off into loop, twist and billow in one direction or another  while having smooth surfaces all with the same thickness.

Her material is white porcelain clay that includes graded molochite grogs to ensure low shrinkage during firing also this grade of clay does not readily collapse it can be used to make large forms

When the clay is quite dry she spends hours in a fume-cup-board, sanding away at the surfaces.

The sculpture pieces are allowed to dry slowly and are finally fired twice at stoneware temperature 1230o -1250o degrees Celsius for up to 48 hours and finally treated with white silicate slurry of kaolin which forms a white colour coating. Her kiln sets the limit to the size of her work. Each piece takes from two to three months of work.

"Influence, pressure, strain these words have been the foundation for my current projects that comprise communicating the theme in large, hand-built clay forms.” Footnote 1   

“People have always been fascinated by the relationship between the interior and exterior worlds: the dualism between inside and outside, content and form, feeling and shape, impression and expression, explanations and religious concepts.” Footnote 2

Given the complexity of Hild's forms one might imagine that she would use a computer to calculate them. This is not the case, she makes a few sketches in advance but the details cannot really be foreseen. Eva Hild's way of working involves endless patience and all the skills of her craft. Her complex forms cannot be cast or rolled out this is why she uses clay for its plastistae allowing itself to be constantly reworked.

Without this use of computer and mathematical calculation Eva’s forms have a timeless quality about them as though they had come about through natural processes. These are also a complex yet continuous flows of reverberating line create organic associations without looking like any specific thin. The absence of colour and the perfection of surfaces keep Eva’s sculptural forms firmly in the area of abstraction.

“Eva Hild achieves a unity of inside and outside, starting from the inside and employing not the basic geometric forms but organic forms from the natural world. Most important of all is the air that fills the cavities the emptiness. What she is trying to do is to visualise something that cannot actually be seen.” Footnote 3

As the viewer’s gaze follows the winding cavities, the shadows and surfaces seem gradually to change form. They reflect varying degrees of external and internal pressures. What makes Hild's forms beautiful for me is there is no concentrate on any particular part there is no focus point. Her Sculptures have no front no best pictorial viewpoint her works convey flowing movement.

 If I were to have one flawed comment in the concept of Eva’s Hild's works is that it is consistently and evenly developed there is little to distinguish between them with her use of white colour. But her changes in colour and overall size in her 2010 show, 11 works where introduction to charcoal-black coloured surfaces transformed her forms context and content.

Eva’s works shows context of her minimalist Scandinavian living, with her shear white/black surfaces also there is a feminine curvature gracefulness within her work.

“Eva has found a personal, wordless language in which to express feelings, whether she is communicating a whisper, pain or joy. And those of us who behold her work are reminded of how our own inner emptiness feels.”

Here is my responance to 2^nd Year Personal Research Project

1st working in paper then translate the same format into clay.

Clay work rolling out slabs then cuting into it.