"Crawling Snail Hand"

 "Crawling Snail Hand"

8" x 4" x 4"

Clay

November 2021

This sculpture is a creation of a surrealist object, or uncanny object.  

This project was required to be made of clay, I had a lot of fun working with a new medium and learning more about the material. This is my first time working with clay! My surrealism inspiration comes from the artist Vladimir Kush. His paintings (and a few sculptures) take animal/plant forms and combine them with human forms. I chose a snail as the animal portion because they make me uneasy, their slime is gross and the slow way they move is unnerving. I made the humanoid portion a hand, I have distinct memories of creeping-out my middle school friends by crawling my, as they called it "boney", hand across the table towards them. 

Overall I think the project turned out well!  The shell should have been bigger to be proportionate to the hand, and the glaze turned a different colour after firing than I expected. I don't think either of those things ruin the project. While imperfect, this is my first time working with this medium so I have to have grace for my mistakes and leave room for learning. 

This is the project in wet clay form:

And here it is after the first firing (right before adding glaze), also called a bisque firing:

(University of Lethbridge, Art 2032 Object and Space, November 2021)