Fine art workshop - week 2

In this week's fine art workshop, we explored and used Richard Serra's verblist, to create 20 clay pieces. In his piece, titled "Verblist" (1967-1968), Serra compiled a list of what he called "actions to relate to oneself, material, place and process". Here is the verblist:

Having chosen the verbs we wanted to portray, we began making them with clay. The verbs I decided to pick were: to roll, to fold, to grasp, to curve, to suspend, to knot, to arrange, of symmetry, to surround, to shave, to join to smear, of inertia, of equilibrium, to expand, to tear, to simplify, to swirl, to crease, to shorten, and to stretch. I wanted to combine a variety of verbs, some simpler, others more complex, such as of inertia, or of equilibrium. Below are my takes on portraying my chosen verbs using clay.

And now to take a closer look at each one...

To knot:

To stretch:

To suspend:

To grasp:

Of symmetry: 

To fold:

To tear:

To crease:

To curve: 

To roll:

To join:

To smear:

To arrange:

Of inertia:

To simplify:

To shorten:

To twist:

Of equilibrium: 

To shorten:

To surround:

To shave:

This workshop really challenged me creatively, and made me think outside the box, in order to show a motion or acting through a still piece of clay. I also wanted to add a bit of performance art, and did this through doing things to the clay when showing others, such as cutting it and stretching it. Although I have worked with clay before, I have not worked with it in this way. It was a quick and spontaneous way of working due to the time limit of 30 minutes, which forced me to not dwell on whether each piece is perfect, but rather focus on whether it shows the verb I want it to show.