Craft Final Project

This semester throughout this clay course has been year of beginnings. After finalizing my divorce this semester, I was left to clean house an rebuild.  You lose old friends, old items, gain an old name, and have to fix a bunch of broken, once know pieces together to remember who exactly you once were.  Its been a semester in heartache- mostly at yourself, for realizing the confidence, self esteem, and happiness you know you once had but had lived for years without realizing how much of yourself you lost for someone else.

This year was a process to find out who I really am.  On a whim, I rented out a small trailer at Big Bend and ventured off on my own to hike the national park for a few days.  Never in the past would I have taken up an opportunity to
spend time alone without having anyway to spend the time with.  Throughout the process I recorded images of myself as if a viewer was looking at me from an outside perspective.  I wanted to capture a living thing in an empty, desolate, but beautiful place.  Thats how lost I have felt, until venturing home renewed.
In absolute darkness eventually you find yourself.

Throughout the entire semester course I have also been taking a Southwest School of Art class downtown in San Antonio. I  briefly was taught how to work the pottery wheel while in undergrad at Texas State, but never really got the feel for it.  It always turned into a flustered mess and I decided that 3D probably wasn't my strong suit.  However, after experimenting with 3D while in Junction I also was able to observe the turn out of work of the ceramics class every time I walked by the clay hut.  Having the exposure of another material and the turn out revived my curiosity to try again.

The clay class helped me 'find my center.' Through the readings that coincided with the class, I was able to understand more on the difficulty of creating with the wheel and the concept behind using and making glazes,  wondering how the turnout will make or break a piece.   After years of course work through undergrad on master painters, it was nice to break away and read the history of the making of three dimensional art and the artists behind the craft.

My clay instructor, Lynn Woods, also worked in Junction several years ago- it was a nice, little connection that reestablished that 'right place at the right time' feeling.  Any advice she gave me instantly worked in centering clay and forming a shape and my once original frustration of clay became a much easier concept to grasp.


The 3 month long course turned in to a stress-free focus zone that I utilized through my own wheel I had in my classroom.  Every so often after a rough time at school I took the time to turn up the music and make a piece at the end of the day.  Below are a few of my pieces through the course and on my own in my classroom.

Ultimately, time and time again, I learn how art is the constant in my life. It is something that will never change, that I will always have, and what will always be a part of me.  It will help me to improve as an art educator, but also my being.  I could not have gone on this year with that one part of me to hold on to to mend everything else together.