UNIT 4: ANIMAL TOTEM VESSELS
*UNIT GOAL: Since the cave paintings of early humans, the visual depiction of animals has embodied great spiritual and cultural significance for cultures throughout the world. Inspired by animal symbolic beliefs and artwork from a indigenous cultures, specifically Native American art, as well as contemporary artists, students will choose an animal of personal symbolic significance. Using this chosen animal as inspiration, students will create a coil-built or wheel-thrown vessel. Both the vessel form and the vessel’s surface designs must be inspired by their chosen animal totem. Students may use any of the surface decoration techniques learned throughout the year to incorporate animal-inspired imagery/texture onto the interior and/or exterior of their vessel (carving, sculpting, relief, stamping, piercing, glazing). In addition to previous surface decoration techniques demonstrated, students will also be introduced to the underglaze techniques of painting, sgraffito and mishima with wax.
*Please note. Many of these photographs will show vessels that have been painted with underglaze. Underglaze is essentially liquid colored clay and can be painted onto the surface of the clay prior to being fired in the kiln. The colors will look dull until the work is fired and the covered with clear glaze and fired again. Projects that look milky/cloudy likely incorporated the mishima with wax technique. The milky colored wax will fire out in the kiln.
