Final Draft

    The enviorment that one lives in can have a tremendous effect on a individual. This enviornment not only influences a person physically, but also morally and spiritually that shows in everday actions. Living in the Snoqualmie Valley, I am constantly surrounded by gorgeous sights ranging from the hights of Mount Si, to the depts of the Snoqualmie Falls; so much that i sometimes take these views for granted. That being said, I thought that nature would be a very appropriate theme to work into my surface design and glazes of my projects this semester.
    The projects I have made this semester can be classified into two different subgroups: surface design incoperating nature, and glazes that illustrate nature. Projects that use surface design to show nature are my lidded, teapot, and hand and wheel. These projects use art elements such as positive space, negitive spece, or carvings to show my theme. The other group, glazes, include my choice 1, choice 2, and choice 3 projects. Art elements these projects include are surrealism and realism. My projects this semester are classified into two groups to illustrate nature.
    I created my projects to represent nature by using several different techniques. In my lidded project, I added carvings into the sides of the body to picture a stream of running water. With my teapot, i carved into the sides to give the look of vines to the body and I also added coils around the spout to show additional vines, but to contrast the carvings. Lastly, my hand and wheel project has two handles and two eyes that makes one want to identify it as an animal, but the project has no distinctive features that allow the viewer to do so. Now, switching to my glaze group, my 1st choice project is a picture of the ocean floor with vegitation that grows from the base of the project. My 2nd project uses a surreal glaze to show how nature can seem puzzling to a viewer. The my 3rd choice project shows a picture of two salmons  in water. By using different techniques, such as positive and negitive space, carvings, realism and surrealism, I incorperated nature into my projects.
    The Reason why i chose nature as a theme for this semester, is for many reasons. First, as i was growing up, I always liked to be outdoors to get away from the restricting feeling of being cramped inside. I remember always having an urge to go out into the woods and build projects like a tree fort or bike jumps. The nature in my projects has helped me relive the glory days of when I was more concerned with having fun rather than worrying about my future plans and how i am going to be able to pay for them. Nature has also played an important role in history, especially during the transcententalist era. I decided to work my passion for history into my projects. 
    By using srface design and glazes, i was able to add nature into my projects. I beleive that I have only begun to even scratch the surface of what is able to be accomplished when one works with nature and ceramics. Overall, taking ceramics was definetly one of my better decisions in my high school career. There is nothing better than turning my mind off and letting my creative side take over showing me parts of myself that i have never seen. As my junior year of highschool whines down, I definetly look forward to taking more ceramics in the future.