November 2017 - Shaping Clay, Shaping Lives

By Don Griffith, Perrysburg High School Art Teacher

Art and creativity are important in education because they give students an outlet for expression where they are able to foster creative thought and develop problem-solving skills. Over 29 years of teaching ceramics, I have witnessed many times students in my second year class designing their projects around the limitations of the materials that they discovered in their first year. Some of those limitations include projects cracking, blowing up in the kiln or glaze imperfections.

To cultivate an environment that makes it safe for students to be creative, take risks and bring depth to their work, I try to be supportive and encourage experimentation on challenging project ideas. In ceramics, I really believe you learn more from ambitious failures than from safe successes. Ceramics class is very hands-on. The student cannot help but to get in there and touch the material, and with more and more practice their success rate goes up and then they are hooked.

One thing students get from ceramics that they perhaps do not get in other classes is a place where the goal is to relax so they can create. Ceramics prepares students to perform well in other subjects as well. Problem-solving skills and developing creative thought are a big part of what we work on here. There's nothing else in the world like that feeling when students have that breakthrough moment and realize they did it – that they have mastered the clay either on the wheel or sculpting with it.

I get so much satisfaction from seeing how many of my students have taken what they have learned and brought it into the world. Several of my students are now art teachers or professional artists. One of my former ceramic students is now my colleague here, Meghan Yarnell, who teaches at the junior high and has her own pottery company, MeghCallie Ceramics.

Even for those who do not go on to pursue the arts, it is my hope that my students will be knowledgeable consumers of art. When they're at Harrison Rally Day or the Black Swamp Arts Festival and they are looking at a potter’s booth, they will remember how hard it was to make a teapot in Mr. Griffith’s class. They will know this potter is good at what he or she does. They will be able to carry on a conversation with the potter using the correct vocabulary.

There is a lot of collaboration that takes place between the students, too. Of course, if one student has a piece that explodes in the kiln, it can take out others around it, so there is maybe some self-interest involved from time to time. But really seeing how – even outside of our formal critiques – the students really do reach out to one another for ideas and suggestions. They are learning to construct things, to engineer them intuitively based on their previous experiences as well as the experiences of their colleagues. It is really all about the experiment and the risk – that's where they learn the most. They do not learn nearly as much when they take the safe way.

One way that I have illustrated this is teaching students primitive ceramics techniques. We begin by digging clay out of the ground right here at Perrysburg High School. We refine it, sculpt it and then actually fire it in a bonfire, much the way this was done thousands of years ago. The first time we tried to do this, we could hear some of the pieces breaking. The second time we tried it, we worked with Penta Career Center and they helped make a metal grate so that we could dig beneath where the fire would go to protect our work while it was being fired. Understanding and appreciating everything that has gone into this craft over thousands of years makes students appreciate technology as well as technique.

I think there is something so satisfying to be able to take a chunk of dirt out of the ground and turn it into something useful, like a bowl. And it is even more satisfying when someone cherishes that bowl and calls it a work of art. The Jacket Report: Shaping Clay, Shaping Lives