Finished Robot Tiles

The Robot tiles are finished







After the bisque firing, I applied a ceramic tile sealer over the surface.







They are now keeping an eye on that Snake Plate hanging on the opposite wall in the entryway.

Robot Jag, part Deux

Transfered drawings onto black underglazed greenware terracotta tiles by using scraffito with a fine needle tool. Boy, my hand is tired. I drew the robots using a soft-leaded pencil then scratched out the lines.


I have no idea if they are wide enough. I'm assuming the underglaze will stay put in a bisque kiln, then I can glaze the tiles with a transparent glaze.


These are definitely old-fashioned robots; not like the modern Japanese influenced transformer like models. They're more R2 D2 than C3po. I think I like the little fireplug, pressure tank guys.




I really like the toy-like look of the robots combined with the rather menicing dial-eyes.



All the tiles will fire to a deeper black. They appear a bit 'dusty' in the green stage because of the residual terra cotta dust left on the underglaze after carving the designs out.

The Robot Jag

So, I'm sitting around this Sunday thinking about what I'll do with terra cotta clay and I remembered a project I had mentally shelved about doing robot tile/sculpture/drawings--just playing around with the sterotyped robot image in antique tin toys from Japan, the cliche robot as in Lost in Space or the one that scared the hell out of me as a kid in "The Day the Earth Stood Still." R2D2 and C3PO, the modern Japanese cartoon robots--all of that.

I began to doodle while watching the pro football playoff game between the Colts and the Giants. 3 or 4 pages later of sketches of robots and the game is over. I didn't see or hear one bit of it even though I was sitting in my kitchen sketching away on the bar and the TV is right there just churning away. I was in Robot World. Funny about that.

I begin with the most conservative form. The square headed, square bodied robot and move on from there tweeking the image and playing with 'hands', arms and legs, dials and antenna.

The ideas come fast and thick and I have to sketch these guys quickly in order to get them all down. The sketches are rough, but enough to make notes that can be translated into more detailed drawings and then converted onto tile with an undercoat brush rendering. Some are influenced by Clayton Bailey, (www.claytonbailey.com) a master maker of full-sized metal robots, references to Star Wars, even modernistic dive suits, a memory of a precursor to G.I. Joe named Major Matt Mason. I remembered the Popular Science magazines my Dad read. I even have a picture of an old streamlined Electrolux vacuum cleaner that came in handy....




Anyway, when ideas start to flow, you'd better be there with a bucket--it's a rare and wonderful time when it happens.

Ray Guns

I just noticed an article in Wired about a potter who is makeing raku ray guns. They're really nice. You can find them at http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/04/ufo_ray_guns_in.html.


I've been making ray guns for several years and also do them on the wheel, but they're made from procelain and used a clear glaze fired at cone 6. On the first two, I selected primary colors in order to relate to the colors used in cheap, shiny plastic toys. Sometimes I have used underglazes and sometimes overglazes. The first one is named "Molecular Redistributor".

The second is "If Mars Attacks" and has more overglaze treatment, though it is difficult to see the difference. Both "If Mars Attacks" and "Molecular" were exhibited at "Toys Designed by Artists" at the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock AR and "The Whmsical Clay" show in Beverly, MA a couple of years ago.

The white ray gun, "Ectoid Extractor" , has not been shown anywhere yet. I have a mate to this one still in the studio yet to be assembled. I like the white shiny surface and glass combination.

The darker fourth gun is "Lunar Artifact" and it was included in the Whimsical show at the end of last year.