Quan Yin

All photos by C. Pennington

Not for Sale / Private Collection

Built in 2014, this Quan Yin now sits beside our back door watching over the garden.

She was as much meditation as technique and I often found myself “waking” up at the end of a work session both tired and invigorated. Her main form came into being very quickly. The real trick turned out to be the dragon coiled around her… that one had opinions!

The first “draft” looked more like Big Bird…

The second version went much better.

She was seated on a lotus flower that rose up out of a swirl of clouds, and the dragon’s tale.

With all the peices in place, it was time for a semester break which meant wrapping her up as carefully as possible to be able to work on her a month later.

After break she was finally ready for her first trip through the electric kiln.

Out of the kiln… not too bad I hadn’t wrapped her wrists well enough so the smaller bits dried and shrank at a different rate than other parts, hence the crack. There’s high fire metal wire inside her hand helping to hold her fingers in the proper position.

Next up – glaze. I used underglaze for some of the tones I wanted, then added several layers (as it turned out a layer or two more than was helpful) of white glaze.