Cat Building, and a Mouse Thrown In
- Maxine Callow
- Jul 29
- 3 min read
My research into origami, narratives and 3D visualisation of said tales continues apace. As I have previously blogged about, I am now officially a folder and I have been building cats and mice and even a dodo (epic fail, but that’s another story). I find the folding useful in understanding the design process for the 3D build in clay.
I now have three cats under my belt and dead mouse. Some are fired; some are in the process of being fired. Bar the first one, I can state all were very enjoyable and turned out satisfactorily. I shall start with the first one.
I decided to keep on with the sculptural aspect of my research and make a small maquette of an origami styled cat. It was long, laborious and not as envisaged. The whole piece was solid and for a small cat, he weighed in heavily. The initial design I found too complex to follow, and so I simplified it both on paper and whilst building. I thought the head took me a long time to build, but the body was even longer. At one point, I almost gave up as it was proving to be far too onerous and process for underwhelming outcomes. However, I did complete him. I experienced a few engineering issues in respect of his legs which I feel were too fine, although well proportioned, to hold the weight of the solid body and head. The finished result is a charming little piece with a broken from leg. However, he clearly is not the basis for a new line of work and, I feel, provides little to build upon.
Although I had two more ideas in mind, accordicat and coily-cat, I decided to go right back to basics and to build a standard origami cat using slab building techniques. I dug out one of my basic origami paper cats and set to it with building. Sticking to my notoriously slim stoneware slabs and using a swiftly made template, I managed to turn out a very lovely 3D cat. It was a very smiley exercise throughout, relying on skills I already have, and a straightforward construction born of good planning. It was great to finally have something that I had enjoyed making and thought was appealing when completed.
Spurred on by this build, I went on to build a slightly less abstract cat, although still notably origami in style. I used the same techniques as my first build, slim stoneware slabs, a stencil and strong planning beforehand. Again, I had a pleasing result upon completion.
My mind was fired up and alongside these builds I was working on the narratives, the stories and the further characters required. In one of my designs, I had drawn a dead mouse with Scrawny and I loved it, so I decided to give him some back story and to build him into the narrative. Deaders was born! I researched origami mice and then set to folding one so that I could devise the engineering aspect in clay. As a process this helped enormously to improve my overall understanding of the build. Again, I made a template and rolled my stoneware slabs. Building Deaders proved slightly more complex, but I suspect it was partially due to the clay being slightly over dry. There are a few changes I would make to the aesthetic if building again. I think the ears are slightly too pointy and should be rounder, and the tail requires affixing to the body to aid in fragility issues. Overall though, another fun and successful build.
I’m now in the process of trialling a third character, but more on her to come.
I have lots of ideas for surface design aimed at including the narratives and after this next initial build, this will be something I can investigate more. I’m thinking that printing, illustrating, textures and slip trailing are all things I can look at. Additionally, the clay body I use can be changed to coloured clays. All possibilities that will need trialling. I will also need to work further on the actual builds and get them to where I am happier with them.
To summarise, I feel I have the basis for a new way forward where I feel things are coming together in terms of enjoyment, aesthetic, narratives, surface design and an overall new body of work. Time will tell, but I’m really enjoying what I’m doing at present and can see lots of potential for the first time whilst studying for my MA.
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