The ceramic torch is passed
Most are familiar with Mrs. Wilson, the faithful former steward of Bishop Kelly’s ceramics room, but as last year drew to a close BK students were fit with the unwelcome realization that she would not return the next year. With her bittersweet send off came the news of BK’s new ceramics teacher, Mrs. Shirer.
Mrs. Shirer taught previously at North Star Charter School, where she taught a variety of Art Classes along with theory of knowledge. She is a skilled functional ceramics maker, proficient in beautiful mugs, and other forms of delightful craft. Certainly with the shift from North Star she has experienced many changes, mainly with size, as North Star was a smaller school; Mrs. Shirer would commonly teach the same groups of kids for four to six years. This lent itself to a closeness with students that she misses, whilst BK is certainly a larger school Mrs. Shirer likes the community, along with the focus on ceramics that she can now have.
Mrs. Shirer enjoys working with teenagers; she says that adults are too rigid and young kids are too needy. Teenagers have a perfect balance between independence and flexibility that allows them to be open to new information but self-sufficient enough to be able to integrate this information into their own art, without needing extensive external instruction. This perspective is sure to be well appreciated, as all through Mrs. Shirer’s classroom there are unique pieces of art, crafted from the minds of eager students. I am thrilled to see the different takes on the same prompts inside her classroom. The current project of her ceramics 1 class is coil pots: tucked away on shelves, drying to Bisqueware, sit beautifully coiled pots, delicately crafted over weeks of work. I certainly feel that any classroom so full of the products of creativity signals a successful beginning to a year of wonderful ceramic art.
In the scope of the future, Mrs. Shirer hopes to teach a solely throwing class and a functional design course, aiming to broaden the skills of Ceramic artists outside of the base class. Mrs. Shirer sees the current classes are too little time to really delve into the specifics of these techniques. The many skilled ceramicists in BK will probably look forward to these clases, and the kids desperately looking for another art credit probably will too. Despite the end of Mrs. Wilson’s tenure at this school it seems the warm fires of the kiln will stay lit, and inside them many more wonderful projects will be warmed with the fires of life, imbued into them by budding artists and students desperate for an art credit alike.
The Bishop Kelly Newspaper 