Appeeling Wallpaper

This piece was inspired by an alternative band named Modern Baseball that says: “Your skin was appealing wallpaper, now your skin is just peeling wallpaper”. I wanted to come up with a sculptural way to express this lyric.

     The coil building technique is exactly as it sounds, rolling out coils of clay, scoring and slipping the coils onto each other and then smoothing out the coils. The process is simple and easy to manage. In order to smooth out the clay, it is helpful to have a serrated rib, as well as a regular smooth rib. Ceramic decaling is a way to transfer a printed image onto a ceramic surface. This is an overglaze process and is completed after the final glaze firing. Applying them is similar to applying a temporary tattoo, you place the decal in water, peel it from the paper and squee-gee it onto the surface. It’s extremely important to make sure there is absolutely no air or water trapped between the surface and decal, this can cause bubbles or tears in the image. Then you put the piece through a low firing. Tarantulas go through something called ecdysis multiple times throughout their life. Also known as molting, a tarantula will shed its exoskeleton once a new one has grown underneath. Babies molt as often as once a month, while adults may only molt once every two years.

Through coil building I sculpted the torso of a woman with a flap opening up a pocket over the right breast. After applying and firing a white glaze, I covered the entire piece with ceramic decals, specifically blue flowers, representing wallpaper. The pocket on the chest was then filled with freeze dried maggots and a tarantula molt, with another placed beneath the collarbone, representing escape. This piece expresses that pain is natural and inescapable, yet society hides it and individuals choose to stuff instead of seeking betterment, out of fear of judgement.