Through this project, I created a series of terracotta clay forms to explore the issues surrounding women portrayed in historical narratives, especially Greek mythology. This project is significant because of the rewriting of the female role in our culture today, especially in social media, with the rise of the #metoo movement.
My project examines how history tends to place female characters in favor of patriarchal idealogy. I illustrated these ideas by taking a famous illustration from an ancient Greek vessel and re-illustrating it to accurately portray the character's historically correct roles. The Loutrophoros ceramic form was chosen to connect the story back to the original storytelling methods of ancient Greece.
The project addresses how we view the characters of the past. History has shadowed stories with one of masculine and slut-shaming that is inaccurate and needs to be reexamined for future generations. The project seeks to reveal the issues in the teachings of history the stories we choose to highlight and the underlying matter of why this is a reoccurring problem in our society.
The Process:
Hand-built Lamb Rhyton
To get to know the clay, I hand-formed from coils a lamb rhyton. A rhyton is an ancient drinking vessel warriors typically used to drink wine before a battle for good luck. Influenced by Persians, the lamb was a common Greek rhyton form along with the dog, wolf, horse, donkey, or mythical creature.
It is made from terracotta clay. Burnished and fired. Hand-painted with high fire black silk glaze. It was fired to cone 09.
Form and Surface Study - Thrown Amphora
This piece was my first attempt at learning to throw an amphora vase form with terracotta. I had never thrown such a porous clay before, so it was a learning process. Learning to throw such large structures was also new to me. Throwing and piecing shapes on top of others was done through trial and error as I had to get to know the drying time of the clay. The handles took several attempts due to the difficulty of making them identical on each side. Once thrown and trimmed, I experimented with different cone levels and patterning. I burnished this surface but only painted some patterns to see how the slip would turn out as a test. This clay turned out over-fired as visible from the dark red hue of the surface.
