I began making houses on the first day of a new job, my first in residential architecture. The home is more than shelter; it’s a safe haven. With this in mind, I made a few, marking various personal events.

This house is stamped with the words, “I hope everything is okay”, and appears to be on the verge of collapse. I built it around that phrase, out of too-thin clay; the edge ripped, the walls tried to collapse so I braced them with wet clay; one brace fell out and the other two stayed. Cobalt seemed the obvious choice for something so dramatic. Great results.

[I’ll add a photo of my mockups here.]
Within a couple of months I’d realized the limits of a typical 25′x125′ Chicago lot; in plan, every house begins to look the same.

The Future
After making a few groups with that in mind, I started wanting a horde of houses, enough to cover my living room floor, or more. I don’t know whether I’ll ever do a living room installation, but I would like to do one, someplace. The architect in me wants to see a room where they’re on the floor, where people walk on a raised path, where the field of houses is raised, to experiment with different viewing perspectives. Contact me if you’re interested in hosting such an installation!

The napkin holder house (first photo this post) made me a minor (very minor) celebrity at NSUC Art 2007, as it was featured on the show’s postcard. The groups were a hit, something I hadn’t anticipated. It’s nice that they’re so dear to others, even as sending houses to new homes moves me farther from realizing my installation. I enjoy making them, enjoy the attentiveness to an object so seemingly simple.

I’ve kept a few for myself; the two at work tend to house business cards, one at home is a napkin holder, others are purely decorative. Despite the sculptural intention, I can’t seem to stop stashing important little bits and pieces in them: the defining difference between condo/apartment and house seems to be the capacity for storage.

I’m interested in transferring my hand-drawn detail sketches to clay, somehow, as a tangible expression of the juxtaposition of life and art.

Although CAD is the primary method of producing architectural drawings today, I frequently work out details by hand - something about that process enables me to think in a way that mouse-in-hand doesn’t.

At work, I’m moving toward the end of wrapping up a big set of drawings for the boathouse at the Great Lakes Naval Base. It’s a masonry restoration and interior reconsideration of a fine 1904 building. In the process, I’ve learned an incredible amount about masonry and roofing.

It seems worthwhile to pursue.

The ubiquitous styrofoam cup. I’d like to slipcast a LOT of them. Some potential routes:

A lineup of as many different sizes and shapes as I can find.
Lots and lots of the same one.
High fired unglazed
Crushed, bent, or folded, as if discarded
Soda fired - funny to have something mass-produced go through a process that produces unique pieces.

This has a lot of potential for installation, too.

I call them rock blocks, for lack of a better name. Got a better idea? Let me know; if I like it, I’ll give you a set. Photo credit: Guy Nicol.

I’ve been somewhat obsessing over the river-rock form for a few years now. It began with the softly amorphous outline of my hedgehog curled in a ball, sketched in pencil. That evolved into pools of watercolor, two, three, four, all the way through seven to a page, finding balance in the forms and colors. Then I picked up a few rocks, real ones, bluish gray, cool to the touch. After that my river-rock work began in clay, too. From a visual standpoint, the dark-roundness appears frequently in my work; it began intentionally, but carries on with some intention as a theme.

About these pieces and this series: they are all easily held in the hand, beg to be played with, arranged and re-arranged. But I imagine them at larger scales, to be sat upon, played in, as an installation in a park. The form would transfer but the material would probably change, and so would the construction method. If you know some way or have a contact that might help my installation dream become a reality, please let me know.

Lots of things I’ve been thinking about doing but haven’t tried:

Big houses. Not absurdly big, but larger than a napkin holder. 1/4″ thick slabs. Edit 3Jan08: Wood fired a couple over Labor Day 2007 with outstanding results.
Porcelain vase type things, with the leafy design. Various sizes, thicknesses, scribing tools.Edit 3Jan08: Had a couple at the Bucktown show. Did a couple in wood+salt without leaves. Made a couple more for soda, trying new details on these large vessels.

Scented oil holder. Place for a tealight in the bottom, airflow to the top, and a dish to hold oil. Conceptual sketches.Edit3Jan08: Abandoned this idea for now

Trays, I’ve still held off in size on trying anything big enough for dinner or serving.Edit3Jan08: Getting them through the soda kiln is tricky, since they’re flat and all, but I’ve got a good number of completed ones now.

Cups with the little sketches. Do in pairs?Edit3Jan08:I don’t know what I was thinking of here.

Little sauce dishes, big enough to be useful. Try some in porcelain with the leafy design?Edit3Jan08: And quite useful as test tiles too!

Chopstick holders.Edit3Jan08: Still do be done.

Tiles; leafy patterned and sketched upon.Edit3Jan08: Abandoned this idea for now

Mosaic with small T6s tiles.Edit3Jan08: Abandoned this idea for now

While I’m trying the different forms, I’ll probably stick to my favorite combinations for materials and surfaces - the four glazes with BB’s SFAO or porcelain, and FCSI with Tile 6 slip, line drawings or carving, and the Woo Blu glaze that I make for myself.Edit3Jan08: I will probably abandon the SFAO in favor of T6’s softer surfaces, and work with temoku and woo blu, leaving the flashier copper glazes behind.