Tiles About Time: MATERIAL TEST LOG + intentions & inspiration

Material research into tiles about time passage using plaster tile moulds and a range of clay bodies & surface treatments.

Conceptual interests & inspiration for the project:
Inspiration came from many sources notably: works by Lynda Benglis, Mona Hatoum, Francis Alys, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, Frank Bowling, Emily Bird & Claire Twomey as well as well-worn encaustic floors in cathedrals and urban shared settings where years of walking erodes surfaces (the tube, for instance); and the non-linear nature of time we fail to comprehend — such as, physics & that which is ‘unknowable’ wilfully. {I go into how these artists and spaces inspired the project in another blog here.}

Interests I intended to explore through the projects: creative destruction, layers, seen/unseen, memory, the performative & time based, erasure, how the material can capture movement, erosion of material from walking, imagery suggesting acceleration of time, capsule of time ~ how ceramics generally stays the same over many, many years and subverting that, loss, from dust to dust, our relationship & experience with time. The balance/imbalance between vulnerability & resilience; intentional ephemerality in material production

Material interests:
Experimental iteration with the following — plaster tile moulds; earthenware & porcelain slip; use of clay stains; reclaimed material; varying clay bodies; sodium silicate (deflocculant); water; range of scraping/weathering tools; drying times; management of application of layers; incising; slip pouring & trailing; breakage; simple printing; how different surface erode at different paces; how to bury and reveal imagery and text within the tile body; use of patterns & how to create compositions in layers. Prioritise low fire and less harmful materials.

Context: specifically for the floor, a decorative, high intensity surface ~ when we put work on the floor ~ at rest / surrendered state / lying in wait / grounded. Public or somewhat public spaces, scope for site specificity, scope for defining parameters of public engagement ranging from public outdoor square to indoor highly controlled & choreographed space, commissioning a dance/performance on the tiles

MATERIAL TEST LOG

{I am realising that recording experiments in an art in itself, hope to get better at this with time.}

Pouring decorative slip, adding buff clay at back

Removing slip with buff, creating a tile entirely of decorative slip, carving into slip + buff tile and inserting some carvings back into tile

removing tile made entirely of decorative slip layers, observing effect of walking on fired tile with decorative slip

carving into reverse of full slip tile, smudging and carving into leftover slip on buff tile, carving lines into leatherhard tile before pouring on decorative slip

poured green slip waited for it to firm up, poured caramel, shortly after pulled across with kidney, pouring top (first) layer of casting slip with stain, from left organge, pink, white (no colour)

inspired by Winchester Cathedral floor, poured white slip onto semi-firm orange tile

using slip trailer for ‘buried’ layer of lines, poured pink onto semi wet white; fired buff tile with wet on wet decorative slip smeared with kidney, not full layers, different abstract puddles, then slip across

buff clay with marbled slip on leather hard, smeared and fired; terracotta tile leather hard with abstract two colours smeared and fired; carved layered slip on buff

leather hard buff with lines firm green poured slip and caramel on top them smudged; orange stained casting slip with white poured onto it; pink with slip trailer dots are deep in slip (must write backwards)

left over slip on buff, carved and smeared

entire tile of decorative slip, carved on the reverse

pink on top of orange with Winchester shape; white on top of text (your sun is where)

orange on white on slip designs with pink on orange

Carving and scraping into stained casting slip leather hard tiles to reveal layers.

After bisque fire…

• the tiles with clay body at the back shrink quite a bit more
• tiles that are totally made from slip shrink very little
• the colours are chalky; curious how they would look with clear glaze but reluctant for sustainability reasons & desire for erosion
• noticing colour combinations
• would like to create stronger compositions
• the reverse of the tiles show possibilities
• if laid out, can alternate from flat/marbled to the ground out/carved ones
• I wish I had, from the start, numbered the tiles, but at least I have this documentation which will be useful

layers of coloured slip and some plain slip plus slip trailing, the dots were pressed in quite deeply

Another set of tiles, and new stains

left over pink/orange slip with lines on slip stacked; white slip; orange/pink reclaim with criscross slip trailed white into pretty wet slip

some of base was firmer than other parts, white slip trailed on relcaimed pink/orange

mixing stains, turquoise, turquoise with a bit of chrome green, print making with a template and a chome green plus yellow stain — sponged on stain only first then sponged on slip with stain

redoing winchester shape that I like, poured turquoise over stacked lines; winchester shape; using print making technique

I tested walking on a tile and it looked very dirty afterwards…which impacts if you are to let people walk on them. Would they get washed?

Some learnings/failures:

• Better numbering of tiles for notes on process, but honestly having the photos suffices
• Place something over slip tiles to keep flat when drying, the curling up is super annoying and something I will avoid in future
• Remove cookie cutters when it’s still wet, but like the challenge of working with the breakage and will try to glaze them together

Cutting into & rubbing more slip tiles

burnishing with smooth stone, diversifying tools and using reclaimed slip that has been carved away wondering how it will perform and liking the evolution of the colours through reclaim

cobalt stain, poured tiles

writing backwards in cursive isnt easy; ‘beau fleuve’ is because I am thinking of a specific context, the grain elevators in Buffalo New York and it is thought that ‘beau fleuve’ was the original name of the area given by French fur trapers and the english misinterpreted it as Buffalo even though there are absolutely zero buffalo native in the area

experimenting with imagery and using grain as inspiration as well as difficult to interpret ‘writing’, creating a bit of symbolism

enjoying mixing stain colours

symbols for grain

engaging with breakage

glazing the breakage (this probably wont work well but is something I would like to explore more)

expressive and free pouring then press clay body onto back

rubbing, erasing (shame to see those gorgeous crisp lines go!) incising on terracotta inspired by Buffalo & Frank Lloyd Wright

slip on incised tile, using a pretty wet tile so it will smear and interact with tile clay body but waiting for slip to firm up a bit

thinking of layers and wallpaper, a slightly historic wallpaper design, smearing it and adding yellow lines

a template (print-ish), to do again partial cover rather than all over (this one is not literal) could do both and scrape away top pattern; slip, terracotta and porcelain slip

the porcelain slip has a much different texture, these will fire strangely and probably create weak spots in the tiles

layers of a tile and using black stain to stain clay for a layered tile

layered tile alternating from uncoloured clay to black in six layers, will be carved after time in drying cupboard

carving to see how far the marbled slip went into the clay body, a few trials with coloured slip but the tile is a bit too dry

strong jet of water onto tile created an interesting aged erosion effect; scraping back

i got a little confused about the front and back of this one…; scraping layers

these are just layers of coloured slip, all reclaimed, I am getting good at knowing when to pour and not to pour and explored various ways of revealing layers, really like the edges

sodium silicate application on top of thick clay (more than twice the thickness of the other tiles) and two layers of slip, then bashed to form cracks — dryness/wetness and timing are essential

First tile with sodium silicate, on a tile made with reclaimed clay that was a mix of unstained and black stained then pressed into a mould, the process with sodium silicate is to get the clay to spread and surface then breaks — so I didnt get very much effect as the clay was already a bit thin — so for the next try, i made it much thicker — however, i really liked when i pulled apart the tile and the black clay was revealed

taking a slip tile outside that has not been bisqued and pouring water on it; placing a bisqued tile beside; the water does a good job of revealing layers and I like the coloured run off

NEXT:

I would like to look at these on the floor, fire a few and glaze fire with a clear glaze. Reflect on what has been made a bit more — I was so enjoying the material tests, I was making tiles right up to the end of the time allowed so some reflection would be useful in terms of looking at what they actually look like. I could build a more specific body of work thinking more about how the tiles relate to one another as well as getting more specific on a site.

I love colour and have so enjoyed these tests, it would be great to evolve the work a bit more compositionally but I am pleased with what I have been able to accomplish in three weeks, particularly given that every technique I used and every way I used materials was new to me before this unit!

HERE is a short slide presentation I did on this project for my course at Central Saint Martins.

And below is a blog post where I go into the inspiration I had for the project:

Tiles on Time: Inspiration & Sources