Swallow's Nest

Alan From Argyll Pottery had a great photo of a swallows nest on his blog and it reminded me of Adrian Arleo. I was fortunate to work as the studio assistant during her sculpture workshop here in January and she told the story of these swallows that she watched build a nest over her door and it gave her the idea for a unique surface texture. She watched how they built up the layers and then tried to duplicate it. She did a demo of this technique for us and it was the most tedious and time consuming thing . Adrian is one of the most methodical and patient clay artists I have ever seen. Her workshops are so full of information, even though I will never attempt a sculpture as large and detailed as hers, I came away with much inspiration and some great ideas to try. This is one of Adrian's pieces using the nest texture
here is Alan's swallows nest
This is Adrian beginning an armature demo at Claymakers
She later used the legs to demo several different surface textures she uses. The very top is the nest technique
A close up of a test tile with the swallows nest texture.

Second week of camp, I will try and post some photos later in the week. Today we made igloos and polar bears. Tomorrow pinch pot bowls with animal heads. I have a much larger group this week, one little guy doesn't speak English, but he gave it a good try today anyway.