Lincoln grad shares love of ceramics with LHS art students

2011 Lincoln Schools graduate Gabe Harris returned to his Alma Mater last Thursday to bring his love of ceramics to junior high and high school students as a part of a course designed to expose the community to ceramics.

Harris, an Anthropology major at University of Montana Missoula, spent the school day presiding over several interactive demonstrations in which students painted designs on 23 mugs provided by Harris. They were also able to take turns at the pottery wheel.

"All of those mugs I made in class then brought here," said Harris. "I'm in Ceramics Two, taught by Julia Galloway - it's called Clay in the Community. We bring clay from the studio and move it out into the community – I did it by first doing the mugs, people are painting them, and I'll take them back to the studio, glaze them over and bring them back."

Although Harris is not majoring in ceramics, he has been making pottery since his interest in ceramics was first sparked in the very classroom where the demonstrations took place. As a high school student, he was introduced to the pottery wheel by art teacher April Erickson.

"He was in my room three hours a day doing pottery, during his whole senior year," Erickson confirmed.

Although Lincoln Schools doesn't currently offer a pottery class, Erickson said she incorporates it into the regular art curriculum. She expects a spike in interest after Harris' demonstrations.

"Especially in junior high – they kept coming back all day. Some of them really took to it right off the bat," she said. "Now I'll have to pull the wheels out."

"I'm just hoping to get everyone interested – April has all of the stuff to do this," said Harris, who provided the clay for the class, but used the school's two pottery wheels.

Although the demonstration was an assignment for college credit, the idea to conduct the classes in Lincoln was Harris' own.

"I could have done this at any school, I just wanted to bring it back here because this is where I learned," he said. "It was to give people a chance to see sort of the finished product, and then also introduce them to how I made the cups. That way, maybe some people will be interested in ceramics and give it a try, and the community can kind of see what it is."

Harris has arranged for the mugs to be made available for free at Coyote Coffee.

"They're going to go to Coyote Coffee and they're going to be dispersed through there. They'll offer them in place of a coffee cup, and students can request the one they made, on a first come first serve basis," he said. "It's a mixture of my mugs, but painted by the students, so it's like our mug."