Working with clay: A 7-year-old and her pottery class

Carlisle’s Old Home Day festivities take place this weekend. While I gear up mentally for the 5-mile road race I expect to run and gather supplies for the pie-baking contest I agreed to oversee, my 7-year-old, Holly, spent a good part of last evening selecting the pieces that she plans to enter in the Art Show.

I almost missed out on the idea of having her take part in the Art Show, and this is a good example of how I tend to pigeonhole myself and my family. I think of our recreational talents lying primarily in baking (me) and sports (Rick and Tim); I’m not artistic at all from a “studio art” perspective, so the Art Show simply wasn’t on my radar. Fortunately, a friend who knows how much Holly enjoys her weekly pottery class urged me to look into it.

Holly does indeed enjoy her weekly pottery class, and so do I, even though my direct involvement is restricted to dropping her off at the instructor’s home studio at the beginning and coming in for a few minutes at the end to chat with the instructor and examine Holly’s newest creations. I feel like Holly has found her artistic niche, though, and there’s so much I admire about this class.

Like most kids her age, Holly has long enjoyed art projects, but I quickly grew frustrated with the ever-popular crafts kits she received for presents or asked me to buy when we made a stop at the toy store or the crafts store. Although the concept is good – all the materials needed for a particular craft activity pre-cut, pre-measured and pre-packaged in one tidy box – it didn’t take me long to realize how much waste was involved. The packaging alone usually involves plastic trays, paint cups, and paint brushes within the heavy-duty cardboard box; moreover, when you’re done with these kits, you’ve usually made one thing. One item, with all that material. It’s not that the young artist is disappointed to have one thing to show for her work; it just never seems to me like a very good use of resources.

Pottery, by contrast, is so charmingly old-fashioned. The instructor, Mrs. Lemmerman, has been teaching pottery to kids and adults here in town since I was Holly’s age. She’s a genuine artist herself, a potter, and I like the idea of Holly seeing how an actual artist works and lives. Furthermore, unlike many of the kids’ activities which always seem a little too scripted and organized, they’re very much on their own when it comes to planning out their time with clay. Mrs. Lemmerman shows them all kinds of examples and has books on hand for them to page through as well as various accessories such as garlic presses, seashells and stencils to encourage their ideas, but for the most part, the kids come up with their own individual schemes for what to make each week.

They learn from each other that way, too. Holly once unapologetically told me she spent most of one class watching the other kids work because that day she just felt more curious about what they were creating than inspired to start anything herself. This too seems to me like the perspective of a true artist: sometimes you make the most progress when you observe your colleagues at work rather than forging out on your own. I also value the fact that the class is mixed-age. Unlike school, afterschool sports, Girl Scouts and summer camp, all of which are rigidly organized by age group, pottery gives Holly the chance to learn from older kids and have the fun of helping younger ones.

Now, having just finished her second eight-week pottery course, she has quite an inventory of completed ceramics to show for her efforts. (In fact, one of my friends said she stopped signing her daughter up for pottery when they ran out of shelf space.) Holly keeps them all displayed in her room; that bookcase is the only part of her room she keeps consistently tidy, in order to show off her work to best advantage.

So when I told her about tomorrow’s art show, she took her time picking out the maximum allowable four pieces, examining each item she made recently, selecting some, ruling out others. What I haven’t told her yet, and probably won’t, is that it’s not only a show but also a contest. I’m hoping she doesn’t notice. She’s thrilled with the idea of exhibiting her work. If she knew about the prizes, winning a ribbon would become important. Right now, her only priority is in deciding whether to award her fourth spot to the fish soapdish, the flag tile or the crimson coil pot.

I’m happy to see her take pride in her work. Prizes and ribbons not withstanding, I’m hoping she’ll continue with pottery for a long time. It feels very organic to me and I like what it’s teaching her about art. I can’t wait to see her work on exhibit with the work of all of Carlisle’s other artists, young, old and in between, this weekend at Old Home Day.