Notre Dame Catholic Secondary School’s Ceramics Program is Fired Up!
Notre Dame’s NEW ceramics program, is off to a great start! When grade 10 Ceramics and grade 11 Ceramics were added to the course calendar last February, we instantly started to hear the buzz of students who were interested in getting their hands dirty with clay and who wanted to try the pottery wheel. To our surprise, we handed up having a whopping 90 students picking ceramics as one of their art electives!
This past September, the Grade 11 open Ceramics course started things off with a full class of 30 students, all coming from a variety of art backgrounds. Students have been creating a range of ceramic projects including textured tiles, vessels with spouts and handles and taking turns learning how to throw on the pottery wheel. They have been learning an array of building techniques from coils to slabs and different ways on how to apply glaze to their pottery. There has also been a lot of cross curricular learning between visual arts and history, science and math. Students have not only found this course to be a unique creative experience, but have also enjoyed the relaxing and calming ambiance, which in turn, has been overwhelmingly positive for their own mental health.
We will be having our 1st Notre Dame Ceramics sale during our first week back in January, as well as a 1- day exhibit of the completed ceramic pieces in the atrium of the school. Then, in semester 2, we will be starting all over again, with two full classes of Grade 10 Ceramics, 25+ boxes of clay and firing up the kiln once more.
Sebastien Lelasseux
Visual arts teacher/artist