Wheels are spinning, vessels are forming, and friends are laughing. People are slipping, coiling, and throwing clay at the pottery club at State High.
“[Pottery club] offers a new way to do art that I feel like a lot of people overlook. I feel like people don’t think about ceramics being an art…When they think of art, they don’t think of ceramics. And, in ceramics club, I just see a lot of people, like, they go, and they’re like, ‘oh, I click with this,’ and they didn’t know that it was possible to be into art,” senior and president of the club Lena Tepoel said.
Pottery club is a place where students meet and make various clay objects from 3:50 p.m. to around 5:00 p.m. every Tuesday afternoon in room F156. Students can create their own clay art, throw clay for fundraisers, or, if they are in a ceramics class, they can work on projects from their class. It’s a place where students can relax and have fun while making pottery.
“It’s really neat to see kids come together and work together on certain things and also come up with their own projects. Some of the stuff that the kids have been making that aren’t my students specifically are really beautiful…And it’s a very helpful atmosphere. So when kids don’t know how to do something, there’s other students there that may have those skills that are willing to share,” Erin McGann, pottery club advisor and ceramics teacher, said.
As well as McGann, there are also student leaders of the club, with Tepoel as president, senior Katy Schmeck as vice president, senior Hannah Eckley as treasurer, senior Emme Loehr as secretary, and senior Lea Wassom as social media manager. Their Instagram is @statehighpotteryclub.
Under the direction of McGann and the student presidency, the pottery club hosts a couple of different events to help the community, such as the Pottery Palooza Throw-a-thon and the Empty Bowls Project.
At the Pottery Palooza Throw-a-thon, the pottery club invites local potters to help throw bowls or make clay bowls in preparation for the Empty Bowls Project fundraiser. The pottery club throws bowls at their regular meetings as well. Their goal is to make 250 bowls for the fundraiser in April.
Then, when April comes around, the pottery club hosts the Empty Bowls Project fundraiser. During the fundraiser, the pottery club partners with culinary arts teacher Zach Lorber and his students to sell soup made by culinary arts students in the bowls made by the pottery club.
“When I was here in 2001, my senior year, I participated in the Empty Bowls Project as well…I really wanted to get involved with being a part of that project again because all of the proceeds from that dinner will actually go to help the food bank,” McGann said.
Pottery club is a place where students can have fun, catch up on schoolwork, and help out the community.
“I’ve seen so many people become friends,” Tepoel said. “You don’t have to be good at pottery to do it. I was so awful at pottery for the first year that I did it. Pottery club, you don’t have to go and be perfect…It’s really fun.”
