My Senior Capstone is inspired by my interest in Ancient Egypt, specifically in their procedures dealing with death and burial. It is also pulling inspiration from the old idea of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which I was recently reminded of when I watched the show "Good Omens". This project focuses on combining these two elements in my body of work and creating four Ancient Egyptian canopic jars with themes following each horseman.
Death
Death is something both scary and peaceful so to evoke both feelings, I created the night sky fading down into black with smoke and red lights. The night sky has three constellations in it which are the sculptor, the painter, an allusion to my craft, and Orion's Belt, my favorite constellation. The stars were going to be made of human teeth, to add more of the off-putting terror into the calm night sky. These would be set in holes carved in the pattern of each constellations, and there would be some lights inside to provide a glow effect. Hole would also be in the bottom and from here a steady stream of smoke or fog would glide across the pedestal, and small red lights would create an eerie glow.
Famine
Famine was originally going to be flesh toned with protruding ribs and spine. When I decided to make Pestilece fleshy instead, it took me a very long time to decide on something new. The above picture is my final realization of famine as dry, dead earth, with plants that tried and failed to grow in its cracks.
Pestilence
Pestilence was designed to repulse its viewers by creating a look of skin with a variety of maladies. These include burns, rotting, infections, and open wounds. I applied skills learned in theatrical makeup class to create these wounds, especially the burns.
War
The top is designed after scorched dirt, and were I to add a lid, it would take the shape of a mushroom cloud, hot and angry. The design of War was another jar that took a bit of pondering before a decision was made. I wanted to show the idea of metal, and planned to use a raku copper penney glaze to achieve this look. The faux rivets were to be made from the ends of ammo shells and are larger that what is shown here. The outline of the can be seen in the progress photos, and well as a lesser amount of metal sheets on the jar.
Progress Pictures and Unfinished Pieces
My original plan was to create four physical jars from clay and go through the process of hand-building, slipping, glazing and firing them but due to the unexpected nature of COVID-19, this was not to be. When I first started, I hand-built all four jars using the same hump molds, one to make the domed top and the other a cone to spiral around as I began to coil build the bottom portion. I have two jars completed through the colored slip phase, Death and Pestilence, with one having been fired and one ready to be put in the kiln. These are still on campus and cannot be reached at this time. The other two jars were in their beginning stages of sculpting, so I brought them home along with two logs of clay. After a few weeks of sculpting them on my dining table, I realized this was not going to work well. I left them to go green and had to reconfigure all of my plans. Going back to the drawing board, I realized I could do exactly that: a drawing. I proceeded to start one using colored pencils, but quickly realized how poorly the color was showing up. I needed something much more vivid and strong so switching to acrylic paints was my next move. I made a template and traced out four of the same jar shapes and drew on them with pencil, then filled in the patterns with paint. I then cut them out and mounted them on nice thick paper. They've turned out so much better than expected and I can say I am extremely proud of what I've been able to accomplish despite the COVID craziness.
At Pacific Lutheran University, senior students are required to complete projects within their majors, called Capstones. For art students, this means creating a piece of work or body of works to display professional and answer questions about from their peers.
