Emrbrace of Renewal

The aim of the art project was to utilize Finnish red clay. I bought my clay when I visited Kultelan Tiiliputki factory. In my subject, I wanted to focus on people, on couples. We all have our own wounds, but together we can flourish and draw strength and love from each other.

I wanted to develop my skills in making statues, so I used the book Mastering Sculpture: The Figure in Clay by Cristina Córdova. The book was very helpful and informative, also inspiring with many pictures.

The statue was fired in one go, for decoration I used black and yellow iron oxides, which turned dark purple and reddish when fired. The statue was fired at 1050 degrees, in the future I would fire this red clay at a lower temperature to get more orange shade into the ceramic.

The challenging part was the paper porcelain flowers, which I built around ceramic wires. During firing, the clay shrinks, so the flowers got small cracks. The time-consuming part was gluing the flowers with Loctite glue. Drying was very slow.


Project Type: Ceramic art.
Location: HAMK Desing, Hämeenlinna.
Date: 2023-2024.