Cleansing my Artistic Palette

I had a studio sale recently and once again it became obvious just how much I love color. My pieces always seem to gravitate towards blues and greens. For a short while I tried to stay away from blue and green and found my self working with purple. What seems to be missing from my work are pieces in more neutral colors, earth tones, warm colors.

Perhaps these colors are just not part of my aesthetic. In fact, when I do try to design with these colors it feels forced to me. Assessing the finished piece, I am often unsure about it. It is sort of like wearing brown and black together. I know this works but I always have to remind myself.

Thinking that I may need to stretch myself I have decided that in the next few months, I will only work in the neutral tones. To start I went with a piece totally void of color; a palette cleanser if you will. It was also an opportunity to try out a new slump mold that I purchased. It is a Slumpy’s mold #SM-9219.

I can tell already that this mold is definitely not going to be a favorite slump mold of mine. It is the nature of the beast that when using a mold like this the sides will “slip” in. I don’t mind that, but I do mind that they aren’t even. There is almost 1/2″ difference on the two sided. I am definitely not giving up on this mold yet though. Some more tweaking with the slump firing schedule might help this.

You may have noticed in the picture of the finished piece that it isn’t clear anymore. It stared out as a clear textured piece of glass but in the end I decided to sandblast the back to make it pop out more. So now it looks white. But hey, it’s not blue or green!