Flower, leaves, and sculptural nerikomi

Chris Campbell’s floral nerikomi impresses me very much, and for my incense tray projects I’m trying to emulate her flower designs. She uses porcelain, which seems to be the standard for colored clay, but I prefer to work with stoneware, because for me it seems more predictable sculpturally, and I’m not very interested in the translucent properties of porcelain.

I start my designs, as I did before, by drawing while imagining how to construct the pattern. I chose forget-me-nots and magnolias (not pictured) as flowers of significance, the former in the name itself and magnolias as the LA state flower.

This is me also trying to copy Campbell’s leaf patterns found throughout her work.

The cut flower cane, which came out a bit wonky as I tried to fill in gaps with white clay.

As it reduced, as I sort of expected, it got more wonky.

I’m not very worried about it not looking enough like a flower, because as the pieces come together I think it’s clear it’s meant to be floral - I’m not aiming for it to be obviously a specific flower.

The magnolia themed flowers, cut with a snowflake cookie cutter. This took an enormous amount of clay.

The final slab, combining all the different colors and flowers.

While the slabs are left to rest, I made the guinea pigs, which will hold the incense sticks on each plate. I will add the orange clay when they’ve died a bit to create the fur pattern.