Students are to use a few days to make a sculpture or "something" out of clay as an experimental piece. This piece will NOT be fired and will be recycled after grading so there's no need to worry about thickness or hollowing out or if a part is too thin to survive the "traumas" of our firing shelf, etc.
Students are encouraged to think creatively and make something that they might not have the chance to make if the "rules" were followed.
They may want to use a wire armature in their clay (Which we can't usually because our water-based clay shrinks and cracks away from the armature.) OR they might want to make something thick enough to hold itself up even though it would be too thick to fire. Even abstract clay work like Paul Soldner's could be explored.
Evaluation for an actual clay piece:
5 points for attention to detail
5 points for wild creativity
An alternate project would be for students to research sculptures or pots that they would like to make if they had the time/skills/materials to do so. If students choose to do the research project instead, they need to find 5 good quality images (Instructions for finding high quality images are here.) to show the teacher and explain why and how they would make those sculptures/pots/decorations.
The objects do not need to be made from clay. Maybe they want to sculpt the Ex Nihilo from the tympanum of the National Cathedral Students would show the teacher the image and talk about how they might make that sculpture including some technical aspects like tools used and materials and techniques, etc.
Evaluation for image research:
2 points for each image and detailed explanation as to why the student would want to make that project and how they would achieve it.
10 points total.
