LOS ALAMITOS, CA – At Los Alamitos High School, visual arts is appreciated by faculty and students through various courses including printmaking, studio art, 3D design, and photography, but also ceramics. Ceramics can be taken as a first or second level beginner or as an advanced elective course. Each level calls for the building of techniques, which allows students to create beautiful and functional pottery. 

Why students love ceramics

Ceramics is a popular elective choice on campus because it is a great visual arts class that calls on students to challenge themselves, all while making pieces that they enjoy. Students are able to get their hands dirty by molding clay into the shape they want, along with frustratingly trying to get the shapes of their various pottery pieces as close to perfection as they can.

“It’s a place where students feel safe [and] accepted. They enjoy doing [ceramics], but they also enjoy a sense of competition as well,” Mr. Carthew, Los Al’s ceramics teacher, said. 

Mr. Carthew is the only ceramics teacher at Los Al and has been teaching ceramics for 11 years, but has been involved in the art departments at Los Al for 25 years. He loves ceramics as an art form because he is able to interact with his students by teaching them something he really enjoys doing. His calm presence and mellow classroom atmosphere inspires his students to think more creatively. 

“I like how Mr. Carthew is really nice and supportive with the throws you do and whatever you make,” said Katy Hoadley, a Los Al freshman and beginner in ceramics.

Mr. Carthew rotates yearly between the projects he has for his different class levels, but there is no difference in the techniques and skills that his beginner and advanced students do. 

“[My beginners] start with hand building and that can be ornamental, sculptural, [or] functional,” Mr. Carthew said. 

Beginner vs. Advanced students

Beginners start with the basics of learning how to use the wheel, then they usually go into learning how to throw clay on the wheel to get it to stick and projects where they typically make mugs, bowls, teapots, etc. 

Additionally, his beginner-level class made a tool holder for their tools at the beginning of the school year, which they will use continuously throughout the semester, and many students said that it was one of the hardest things they have done so far.

After learning the basic skills, beginners cycle back to hand building and sculptural pieces towards the end of the semester, while advanced students grow on the skills they learned as a beginner. Students use the same skills but add on to the technique to create pieces like birdhouses, whistles, or more complex pieces. 

“A lot of the beginning students use the same techniques as the advanced, [but] they’re just doing it at a lower level,” Los Al’s ceramics teacher said. 

Advanced students have the added challenge in the semester of making a set of three nesting bowls that have to fit inside each other. This is a project that is developed through techniques like hand building in the beginner-level class. 

Ceramics at Los Al

Ceramics is a great class to build confidence in what you create. Despite getting frustrated about the clay not forming into the shape they want, students love the fact that they can express themselves through their pottery. Everything they make is theirs and they feel proud knowing that they created something amazing. 

“I like how whatever you make is kind of your own,” Hoadley said.

“I like that [ceramics is] challenging and you can get dirty. It’s kind of an escape from school,” said Allie Wilson, a freshman and beginner in the ceramics class. 

At Los Al, ceramics is a class that builds not only skills but self-awareness of difficulty. Students are able to learn how to trust their intuition with what they create and that can increase their respect towards their abilities and what they believe that they can do. 

“I like for [students] to realize how incredibly difficult [ceramics] is and then to be able to overcome obstacles, problem solve, and say “oh my gosh” this class was so hard, but I want to do it again,” Mr. Carthew said. 

Overall, Los Al’s ceramics class is a great outlet for students to better imagine a world full of possibilities that they might not have considered because they doubted their abilities. By doing ceramics, students are able to fuel their creative side and create pieces of art that they never imagined they could do.