Zip-It

Artist Statement: I have taken ceramics for only one semester, Zip-It being the most successful of the pieces that I created. I am fond of Zip-It in particular because it presents the viewer with the optical illusion that the piece is legitimately being zipped open. Due to the fact that I had not quite yet mastered the wheel (and they were waiting for repairs) I looked to a multimedia presentation shared by my teacher for inspiration. Remembering that my younger sister had a collection of small zippers at home, I collected it and brought it to school to use in my own adaptive design of what I had seen in the presentation. Once I had formed the clay into a tall and sleek form using large sheets of clay from the slab machine, I decided to finalize the body with a jet-black dip glaze before attaching the zipper itself. Looking back on my process, I am glad that I learned about slab pottery and how to apply dip glazes, but I would still like to explore how one would create similar pieces on the wheel.