Ceramics week 5

Following on from the cardboard "architectural quotes", I made some freeform facades from crank clay, creasing them after embossing and cutting the doors/windows, or adding a bit of slip once they were standing there nakedly. The creasing process led to this "nightmare stair" (and another smaller once, which was not worth firing*) - this is the back view -
As you can see by comparison with the stairs that were bisque fired since last week, the nightmare stair is steep - and weighty - and yet could crumble at any moment -
Amid all this making, and a bit of rearranging of storage shelves to give us more room for our "accumulations", we were aiming to have a group crit at 3pm - leaving each of us about 10 minutes to say what we're aiming at, and for the others to give their reactions. Everyone had an "I'm not sure what I'm aiming at" or "I don't know how to integrate these" or "not sure quite where it's going" story to tell! On explaining my plan (such as it is), I felt more at sea than ever. But salvation lies in the making - of more ceramics, of models of the projected life-size stairway -- and in the editing. (Which led me to muse on how visual editing might differ from literary or technical editing - but that's another story for another time.)

Getting out "everything" yet again led to people moving pieces around to make "rooms" - perhaps that could be a part of the final piece, letting people move the elements around? There are still many possible aspects to think about -- and although it's confusing and anxiety-producing, I do like the "mulling" and the sense of yet-unexplored possibilities. I just need to be making, making ... thinking with my hands ...
Here's the bigger picture, with several streams of thought - corners of rooms and "just corners" and the stairs and the opening doors...
What I realised later is that the "display" was set out in my usual orientation, and that everyone else was looking at it from the back - like this -
"Behind" - yet another aspect of "inside, outside, in between"!

Gathered together - a collection of corners -
and the items for bisque firing this week, glazing next week, and eventual editing. Uh-oh, the one in the front still needs scraping back - it has inlays of black slip, and I wanted to scrape the surface smooth ... but does it matter? The rolls of slip (which were dried on plaster) look like vines growing through the wall, or snakes (The Speckled Band - ?) entering the old house...
Finally, photos of the almost-finished pieces from a week or two ago. Click on the picture to see them properly.
Yes I dropped one and it broke. Never mind, make another...

At the end of the day I was exhausted (a crit, however friendly, will do that ...) and felt I'd moved backward rather than forward. Some old "bits" went into the bin - storage space is a problem - and a few others came home. I need to figure out what to concentrate on - which means I need to know "where" all this is going ... so, to bed, with book and pen, to muse some more on this ....