New Work – Guess the Title
Hand-built porcelain covered box with slip transfers (green), 6″ x 4.5″ x 4.5″
Alt view of porcelain covered box
Last week, I had to sign a permission slip for my 10 year old daughter to attend “Family Life” classes at her elementary school in Denver. I don’t have any problems with the class, but I am curious about what they are going to learn. I’m an open book as far as that topic is concerned and I don’t want my daughter to be embarrassed to talk with me when changes start happening to her body and puberty kicks in full force.
I vaguely remember attending a similar class in 6th grade back in Hamden, Connecticut (near New Haven, home to Yale). The boys got to go play four square, while the girls were holed up in a room watching a grainy black and white reel to reel film that invariably needed adjustment during the show. In retrospect, it was good timing. Hamden was where I first introduced to the game “Spin the Bottle” and “Truth or Dare”. The year was 1978 and my family lived in a ethnically mixed neighborhood where I was the whitest girl around – my nick name was “Casper”. Somehow, I managed to make lots of friends, was asked to “go” with a boy named David, and was slowly becoming aware that boys and girls were sometimes more than just friends. BTW, between Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy – I was in the Parker camp and I had a huge crush on Leif Garrett.
Tiger Beat idol crushes aside, this was going through my mind when I started making the imagery for this piece. Oh my – my daughter is growing up and I keenly remember how awkward this stage is going to be for her. Can you guess what this covered box is titled?
I used the slip transfer method to create the imagery for the box and hand-built it using stiff slabs of porcelain. I have 2 smaller ones in the works right now that are drying. Instead of doing the slip transfer method, I’m going to paint directly on these 2 to see if there’s any difference in quality or appearance.
Meanwhile, I’ve been hearing bits and blobs about a new FREE web based photo editor called picnik and finally decided to check it out. It’s pretty darn cool if you ask me. If I just need basic photo editing tasks done, I don’t even bother opening up Photoshop right now and go straight to picnik. They have an upgraded version available with more applications, but at the moment, I’m not bothering since I do have Photoshop loaded on my computer. You can pull photos from your computer, Flickr or other photo sharing sites.
Have a good weekend everyone,
~Cynthia
PS. Just a reminder that I will be deleting my blogspot blog http://cmguajardo.blogspot.com tomorrow. Please update your bookmarks and links.
