Sensory objects - recentre bowl

As my making, thinking and research has become less linear I’ve struggled to post in what feels like the ‘right’ order. So here’s to posting what feels ‘right’ right now. Today I finally finished a bowl from my sensory object making series. This series is born out of a workshop I set myself as a way to synthesis my research and my making, to create objects which might be inspired by and interact with the senses. With the premise that they might then offer grounding and calm in the user. This bowl was born of a workshop where I interrogated the sense to see, the curved heavy bottom form based on the Daruma dolls of Zen Buddhism, which infinitely roll and recentre and is used as a visual reminder of Zen. My hopes would be this bowl might house a plant and allow for play and interaction, which mimic the mindfulness and optimism that the dolls themselves offer.

Using a base of carboard box clay, I then coated the bowl in recycled colorama ‘slime mache’. To create a hard, colourful finish. After each coat it was fun to fill in gaps and slowly complete the peice, between other work.

As always my objects have relationships and rely on others. As this series emerges, I’m wandering how I might asses each object and also how it might relate to another. How I communicate or understand this shared language in each.