(2005) A new hater of plaster

I've spent the last few days falling asleep as early as I possibly can. Sounds exciting, I know. Our vase project is taking a lot out of me. It's really cool, but I have a new distaste for plaster. I once enjoyed the stuff, but no longer. We've been using plaster as if it's clay, throwing it on the wheel, as you do with clay. I'm shaking my head right now, seeing that in writing doesn't make sense. I've finally accomplished this impossible task, 4 extremely long days later. Our vases need to be symmetrical all the way around because we'll be blowing them into a mold but they need to be spinning at the same time as the glass is in the mold. So we first had to carve out a profile of our vase and cut it out of aluminum. That part was fine. But then we had to mix up plaster and cast it into a large tube on a wheel to later be carved out by the aluminum profile. That part was nearly impossible. I wish there was a word for the mess that occured during this process. Plaster flying everywhere, spewing out of every crack that was sealed by clay but was a useless sealant in the first place but were not informed of such a thing. It was fun, let me tell you. Timing was everything. If you waited not long enough for the plaster to set before taking the plastic tube off, you had to start all over = big mess. If the plaster was too much set, it was too hard to carve and you would have to start over. Once things finally worked out for me and everyone else in the class, there was a solid plaster cylinder sitting in front of us on a ceramic wheel, just waiting to be carved. We had to attach our aluminum templates to an arm that hung overhead. Away we carved. That alone took a lot of us many attempts, therefore having to start over yet again. When success was reached, we had our positive forms for our vases. The picture is what my vase will look like. If you can't tell what it is, it's the profile of a face. I don't want to admit that it's my profile that was used because it looks like a founding fathers'. No matter, a face is a face... Espeically when your's looks like a founding father's! So the next step was to cover it in laquer (schalaque but I have no idea how to spell that one), then soap for a lubricant, then cast it once again into another plaster casing, this time with paper pulp to make it extra fun. We learned a lot from the last casting process, so this time wasn't nearly as bad. The new negative plaster form will be used as the mold for which we blow glass into to make our vases! Long and complicated, wow. I don't blame you if you didn't follow all of that. I now need to meet the vegetarians and make dinner for tonight. Don't worry Mom and Dad, I'm not becoming a vegetarian quite yet (I never will) I've just acquired a new taste for food of the sort, and it's way cheaper than meat! Later all~