Our current project is very important to me as an artist because this is the first project in which I get to express my feelings and opinions about a topic. I use the act of creation as a sort of therapy in most cases. I communicate ideas through art when I have a hard time communicating them vocally, or to bring attention to them. For this project, I decided to address issues with fracking because no matter how much I seem to sigh and groan about sustainable energy resources, I still seem to have quite a lot of pent up frustration about it. This project is important to me and I will try my best to create a piece that will bring attention to issues in the world and a search for solutions. It is also important because while I continue to address these problems in 2d, this will be my first true ceramic artwork.

Now, before I began creating this piece, I created a maquette. The maquette allowed me to discover some flaws in my original design. While I had planned to create the whole piece from clay, I decided (after numerous attempts of creating clay strips for the maquette) that I needed to make the drill out of metal. I will have to stick the ends of the drill into the cap of the vessel before it dries so that I can glue them in after it is fired. This will be so much easier and will create a more effectively communicated design. I also had trouble with creating the cracks in the vessel, however, the maquette was a solid piece of clay that had not been hollowed out. I believe that this could possibly work out fine when I make the actual piece because it will be hollow.