Students of Technical Ceramics took a hands-on approach to their learning by creating their own clay with materials sourced directly from the ETSU campus.
Lindsay Rogers, an associate professor for the Department of Art and Design, led the class to a renovation area on campus, where students quickly discovered three different types of iron-bearing clay.
“The beautiful thing about clay is that, obviously, we’re in some of the oldest mountains in the entire world… [so] there’s a lot of clay around us,” Rogers said. “Here in the mountains of East Tennessee, you pretty much stick a shovel in the ground and you’re [going to] find clay.”
Rogers had her students gather just enough clay to be able to test how it would react in the kiln. Once back in the classroom, students added water to the clay, and then worked with it using a blender paddle before putting it through a series of sieves. Finally, the clay was left to dry.
The next steps will be to make a small, “charm” sized object to put into the kiln. This is where the test begins, as Rogers is unsure how the three types of clay will react.
“They might be different firing temperatures, they might be different colors,” Rogers said. “We’re just essentially getting a little taste of what the ETSU campus clay looks like.”
Rogers specializes in clay-body science, which is why teaching Technical Ceramics, a class that studies the science behind its chosen medium, is always a fun experience for her.
For her students, Rogers hopes that her class and this outdoor exercise will help them discover how they can take control of their projects by understanding more about their medium, and knowing that they have the ability to make it themselves.
“One of the things that I think is so exciting about it is it is kind of liberating about your materials,” Rogers said. “To know that you can literally just go out your back door and find something that you can make your work with is pretty exciting.”
