PINCHING TECHNIQUE GAVE AN EXTENDED EXPRESSION FOR ARTIST IN MAKING FIGURATIVE ARTWORK

I would like to share my knowledge about pinching technique from Indonesia which has given me an extended expression in making figurative artwork.
It was called pinching technique since we shape the clay using our fingers. First of all we should imagine what we would be formed. The dimension and kind of expression should be considered first before we made the artwork. It would be better if we made a detail design first.
But if you have strong imagination, it would be great to concentrate to the shape we would make, then used our fingers to make the shape. Feel the elasticity of the clay, it had to fit our imagination. Combining the skill you have in pinching, concentration in mind, and feeling in your heart, you could form the artwork which you first had been formed in your strong imagination.
You could find the idea to make an artwork and strengthen your imagination by paying attention to your environment and history uniqueness. For me, ancient cultural background which had acculturated with Indonesian local genius culture was an idea source which had to be dug and created for recent aesthetic expression. The close culture in my side was the source of ceramic artwork creation which was never dried and never been empty for the importance of recent ceramic artwork whether as art expression of individual character or communal ceramic artwork importance or fine art and applied art ceramic characters.
I considered that there were two purposes in making artwork creation:
1).ceramic artwork as pure aesthetic expression media
2).ceramic artwork as functional aesthetic
In most of ceramic product making, I used direct pinching form technique, by arranging plastic clay whether from earthenware or stoneware. I did that by imagining the form, then I hold the plastic clay which I laid on round table. The plastic clay was arranged and pinched into figurative statue ceramic shape to form ceramic statue, whether to make the wall form thinner or giving figurative detail, I was not often to used tool, but I counted on my fingers as details shaper of outside wall ceramic body, while my left hand-finger functioned as holder the inside part of wall to be thinner and united.
To give decorative impression in shape, I combined them with several ornament techniques. They were sgraffito, carving, printing, and engobe stick twisted ornament. to finish the forming process, there could be used glazed or non-glazed burning depend on the shaping clay.
I certainly sure that this pinching technique extended the artist’s limitation in making an artwork since the artist could form anything he/she could imagine from clay. It would be a great contribution for ceramic and clay art technique.