Sacred Vessel
Title: Free Containment
Medium: Sculpture March 2016 Exhibition Text: For my Sacred Vessel piece I intended on creating vessel that was sacred to a group of people because to them, that vessel was now home because of their situation as war refugees. The piece was also inspired by a well known Artist named Naji- Al Ali, a Palestinian artist who created the Handala logo, which I used as a source for inspiration for my clay piece. |
Inspiration
When I was introduced to my Sacred Vessel project, I was given the task to create a vessel that could be considered Sacred. I experimented through many different types of artists and I tried to have a source of inspiration that would come from my cultural background as a Palestinian. The First ideas that came to mind that I had were essentially pieces that I would mainly represent within the paint and different types of hues that I would apply to the piece. Then I began to gravitate more towards objects that could represent the current state of the Palestine and that part of the middle east with, dominantly objects that were violent and were the cause for many casualties in the middle east, them being explosives and other forms of weapons. And because I didn't want to incorporate violence directly within the piece I was creating, I then crossed out those options for the piece. Regardless, I still wanted to include the Palestinian flag colors, then I recalled a symbol that I saw multiple times in previous trips to Palestine, which was apparently called a "Handala". The Handala is symbol created by a very well known Palestinian cartoon artist that wanted to draw attention to the violent situation in Palestine in a way that was not reverent to the news section of the Middle east. His symbol became an incredibly well known piece to people all over the middle east, because it represented how the people of Palestine felt so well, because it embodied the abuse and the perseverance within the victims of Palestinian violence.
Process and PlanningOne of the biggest challenges of this project was definitely working with clay, because of my lack of experience with the material, as well as because working with clay was not something I preferred over almost any other type of medium I have worked with during my high school career. Mainly because of the difficulty I found in manipulating clay into the shapes I wanted them to be. My desired overall shape was a shipping container because I had seen a documentary video on 2020 discussing how refugees from all over the middle east were being forced from their homes because of violence and instability and the majority had no choice but to live within shipping containers, objects that were created with the intention for moving things around the world. The first step for the clay piece was wedging with decent force against a wooden board in order to remove the air bubbles within the piece in order to avoid it exploding when sending it to get fired within the kiln. Wedging it also helped get it into the rough approximation of what shape I wanted the piece to be, which at first seemed simple enough because it was a simple geometric shape. Getting the clay piece to look like what I wanted the foundation to be was incredibly difficult for me, and after came the process of imprinting the symbol onto the piece that I desired. In order to create curves with the tools that I had access to, I had to very carefully make light imprints onto the piece itself in order to attain an appearance that embodied craftsmanship. Then came the process of imprinting the side curves and edges found within a typical shipping container, then came the process of hollowing out the inside of the piece, which was also to the benefit of the firing the process within the Kiln. Lastly came the finally stage of preparation, which was wrapping the piece in wet newspaper or cloth in order to prevent it becoming to dry, but when I was finished with the piece, I had to intentionally dry out the piece's moisture within by leaving exposed to air for one week. Then after smoothing the surface with sand paper, I then had to send it for firing.
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ReflectionIn conclusion, my skill with working with clay remained at a relative novice like level, mostly because of the bad craftsmanship in opinion that is present within the piece despite my intentions. The symbol created by the artist I choose for inspiration, could also use improvement in order to clearly resemble the artists work. For future work, I would definitely consider use of different tools, in order to create a better appearance and maintain the 3D appearance.
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