 It started with the box, made in porcelain. "Porcelain" is just what we call a particular type of clay. It's white and smooth and sometimes a little bit difficult to work with but the end product is beautiful. It's what "the good dishes" that most of us grew up with are made of. I rolled out a large slab of clay, about 3/8" thick and let it dry for a day. From that I cut the pieces for the box and the curved top piece. The box is 13 1/2" tall, 10" wide and 3 1/2" deep. |  The piece for the top of the retablo is about 3 1/2" tall. When it had dried a little, I drew the flowers and carved around them to create a low relief which I attached to the top of the box. Clay is an amazing material. it has phenomenal elasticity but with the introduction of heat it will become permanent, lasting thousands of years. Scientists have tried to reproduce clay...recreating it on the molecular level. They can make a similar elastic material but have never been able to reproduce the permanence. I like the fact that the only way to get clay is to dig it out of the ground; a gift of the earth. It's also a material that allows you to make mistakes and fix them with very little difficulty. |
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Leave a Reply. | AuthorMy name is F.E. Young. The initials are in no way an attempt to desguise the fact that I am female. In fact, I'm happy and proud to be female...it suits me. My problem is with my name. In 1951 my mother named me Frances. This was timed perfectly for my eighth year to coincide with appearence of 'Frances the Talking Mule' movies on television. I became "Francie" just in time for the Gidget movies. For those of you who remember - Gidget's name was Francie. I suddenly found myself called "Fidget." But as an artist I signed F.E. Young. the initials spelled Fey, my grandmother's name and it stuck. ArchivesOctober 2012 Categories |
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