I got this project done much quicker than I thought so there really aren’t too many posts about it, because I focused on it and sole-ly it for 2 weeks straight and got it done in those 2 weeks. I ended up using a little knife to poke a hole into the bottom of the elephant head so that i could stick the chopstick into it and the chopstick was already very tightly attached to the clay base which gave it a great weight that isnt too heavy to hold but feels heavy enough to suggest good quality and a nice weight to hold in your hands. i made sure to cover every last piece with the silver metallic paint which made it very shiny and also surprisingly very soft! One thing that i struggled with, was painting the chopstick! I think it’s because it’s a quite small, thin object, and it was also previosuly coated with some kind of plastic to make it smooth and splinter proof for the users to eat with, but that just made it hard for the paint to stick to. But eventually, I figured out a way to paint it which was basically just taking my sweet time painting it. Because the only way the paint would stay in all places was to do it in sections and then let it FULLY dry before painting anywhere near it. I’m very pleased with how it turned out, here is a picture of it all finished!

Lack of Tusks

May-June 2022, Mixed Media

Emma Barkley

Lack of Tusks is an award I gave to myself for being the #1 elephant lover. It is made with clay, wood, silver acrylic paint, and paper mache.

The elephant has always been my favorite animal since i was a child, and when i learned of the horrific abuse they go through from hunters to take their tusks, I was deeply upset. So with this project, I chose to not make tusks on my elephant because humanity as a whole has normalized these kind of attrocities so strongly, that you wouldnt even notice the lack of tusks until you see the name of my art.

I’ve decided that for my project I was gonna make a paper mache elephant because they’ve always been a big part of my life because ever since i was young, i would always love elephants because the word elephant starts with an “E” and my name also starts with an E and when i was young that was enough for some reason to be my favorite animal! Then as I got older, I got very interested in how hunters would kill such a beautiful and for the most part peaceful animals for it’s tusk alone! It baffled me how another human could be that cruel, and when I learned how many different elephant species were going extinct it caused a great internal panic that had me very stressed for along time even though I would probably never even get to see one of those amazing animals in person. So I’ve decided to make an elephant head, for my award but not give it tusks because without reading all this, no one would even think about how the tusks are missing and that proves a definite point. We as humans are so used to seeing animal abuse/cruelty that we’ve subconsciously normalized it. My award will be for “#1 elephant lover” and it’ll be a solid metallic shiny grey color (to look as though it’s made of pure silver) with a thick clay base and a thin stick that connects to a medium sized elephant head with no tusks. The thinnis of the stick connecting the clay to the head will also reflect on how they’re a dying species so it can almost look like the thin malnourished body/spine of an elephant. I have accidentally deleted the pictures i took of me making the award but i started by making the head, trunk, and ears seperately out of crumpled newspaper, then i attached it all together with tape and began putting the newspaper strips on making sure to keep it smooth. I made the clay base and left it to dry for a couple days and used a chopstick to connect the base to the head.

At first I found this project very difficult because of the handle situation but when i re-did it, i used what I had previously learned with my failed mug, and it was quite easy!

During this project I learned how to make the handle thick enough for it to not break when it dried out, but to make it not so thick that it doesn’t hold when i attach it to the cup itself.

If i did this project again i would probably add arms with clay just like i did the legs!

The glaze came out great with no bubbles or cracks and it’s completely water-tight and doesnt have any painting mishaps like spoltchy underglaze or lazy looking lines or bleeding. I’m very pleased with how this mug turned out and also love the size of it because I needed a new mug that was slightly bigger because I accidentally shattered the one i normally use at home! It was the perfect time to make this mug.

The handle has also turned out great! It’s super strong and is most definitely not coming off which shows how much I’ve learned from my first attempt at the monster mug project where the handle dried and cracked and completely broke. Here’s some pictures of the final product!

Update: I took the mug home and have been using it for the past week and i love it!!! It’s now become my favorite mug and I’m so glad I left the leg off, it gives Ed (the monster on my mug) so much more character! It’s also so easy to clean and it’s also very smooth so it feels great to drink out of!

My opinion on the lack of one leg has truly grown on me in this past week! I was planning to attach it back with super glue when it had gone through the kiln, but i feel like it makes Ed (my monster on the mug) have more character and more monsterly so i’ve decided to not re-attach the leg and keep him the way he is. The glaze came out great with no bubbles or cracks and it’s completely water-tight and doesnt have any painting mishaps like spoltchy underglaze or lazy looking lines or bleeding. I’m very pleased with how this mug turned out and also love the size of it because I needed a new mug that was slightly bigger because I accidentally shattered the one i normally use at home! It was the perfect time to make this mug. The handle has also turned out great! It’s super strong and is most definitely not coming off which shows how much I’ve learned from my first attempt at the monster mug project where the handle dried and cracked and completely broke. Here’s some pictures of the final product! Photos-001 (1)

I forgot to add in the last post that I added little legs with clay to the bottom of my mug and during the weekend i thought of the idea to draw a little monster on the mug with his legs sticking out! And so this week i did exactly that. I painted an orange-ish red-ish colored little monster onto the side of my mug and painted the rest of it black to make him stand out as much as possible. i gave him big very captivating eyes and a cute little almost shy looking smile. But after he went into the kiln, i put him on the table to start overglazing him when all of a sudden him leg broke off! The other leg is still fully attached and doing just fine but for some reason i mustve badly attached one of them and it just couldnt hold on any longer. But the leg that fell off is still fully intact and i’m keeping it safe so i can put it into the kiln and just reattach it back on to the mug after its all been high fired. Here’s a picture of the leg waiting to go in the kiln with overglaze already on it.

So, sadly I was correct when I said that I was pretty sure that my mug handle would break. I left it for the weekend and when I came back on monday to check how it was doing, the handle had snapped in 2 and the bottom half had smushed itslef into the base of the mug which made it very ugly, unstable, and unfunctioning. So I tried to somehow save it because I really liked the size of the cup but it just wasn’t possible because it was already bone dry. So I lost motivation and did it for a while but then later regained the will to work on it, and started over. This time i made the handle much thicker and also made the mug itself much larger so it could hold more liquid because i had recently broken my biggest mug and needed one to replace it so why not make it myself! Next week I’m gonna paint it with a fun design that I havent decided on yet, but hopefully over the weekend I’ll think of something.