The tables in Kevin Wolfe’s classroom at Pangburn High School were covered in clay residue Monday afternoon. Classes had dismissed, and buses had left, but a handful of students stood together in the back corner of the room to get extra time with the new art medium available to them.
As Wolfe instructed one student on how to use the new pottery wheel, pressing his thumbs into the ball of clay to form a bowl, the other students stood around with their own balls of clay, rolling them out and throwing them between their hands like a baseball pitcher warming up on the mound. They were working to make sure the clay was a sphere to give themselves the best chance for a good base when they got to the wheel. At one point, a girl got distracted while talking to her friends and dropped her ball of clay on a rolling cart, laughing as she picked up the clay to smooth out the indented orb.
Wolfe teaches art for grades seven through 12 — this is his eighth year as a school-district employee and his second year as the high school art teacher — and he said he is always looking for new mediums for his students to use to express themselves.
“Kids like to do hands-on projects,” he said. “I have students who you can tell to draw a picture of something, and some of them don’t respond well to that. But if you put something in their hands and say, ‘Hey, sculpt this; carve this,’ you can just see them focus all of their attention on that for the rest of the class.”
In November, Wolfe got word that he had received a grant from Thea’s Art Closet for $2,200 worth of art supplies. He said he immediately knew what he wanted to get for his classroom — a pottery wheel, a kiln and 500 pounds of clay.
“They contacted me and told me to go to Dick Blick Art Materials’ website, fill out my wish list, and they went in and they approved it,” he said. “The $2,200 could be used for any kind of art supply, and I felt like we needed the clay and the pottery wheel and the kiln the most. We’ve painted, we’ve drawn, we’ve used markers and pencils and everything else, but I wanted to take it a step further and introduce them to clay.”
Thea’s Art Closet has given close to $1.2 million in art supplies to more than 400 schools across Arkansas. The grants — like the one Wolfe received — are intended to give art teachers more funds to purchase art supplies.
Wolfe said he is thankful for the grant because there is little to no chance he would have been able to get $2,200 for art supplies from the district because of budget constraints.
“There was no way I could have asked for that much,” he said. “This school is very generous to the art department, though. I’ve never had a problem getting supplies for my classroom. I just thought this was such a big purchase that this grant was the perfect opportunity.”
Wolfe’s students are not strangers to sculpting, but the new supplies will broaden their creative horizons, Wolfe said. Before this grant, Wolfe used air-dry clay for his sculpting lessons, and he said the students were always excited about those lessons.
“Especially my seventh- and eighth-graders,” he said. “We did a project last semester where we looked at the Where the Wild Things Are storybook. We were talking about storybook art, and I had them sculpt monsters based on the book. Then I took it a step further and told them to make the monsters functional so they could hold pencils or put their cellphone on it at home. They did really well with it.”
With the new materials, Wolfe said, he is excited to show students how they can make usable cups and bowls. He said he wants his students to know the processes behind creating everyday items to increase their appreciation for what they have.
“Today we live in a society where everything is mass-produced,” he said. “We are able to go to Walmart and just buy something that’s already made. So many kids don’t know the basics to building things. I was telling them the other day that they can make a coffee cup out of clay, we can fire it, and they can take it home and drink out of it. They were just amazed by that.”
Since word of the grant has gotten out to the community, Wolfe said, several people have contacted the school wondering how they can donate to the art program. One woman has donated more than 160 ceramic molds to the school, and another donor has been in touch with the superintendent about purchasing two more pottery wheels.
“I just try to make this a laid-back, relaxed atmosphere for my students,” Wolfe said. “I want them to express themselves and be creative. They work so hard all day long to try to keep up with the test scores they need to make, and they have their futures to think about. That’s great, but they also need an outlet where they can just relax and be themselves and create things.”