“I like making cartoon characters in Sculpture. My favorite piece I’ve made so far is a cartoon chicken nugget. Sculpting cartoons is pretty easy to do when working with simple shapes. I just enjoy trying to make new things in Sculpture, especially because I feel like there are more techniques I can experiment with.

I first became interested in sculpture after I took Art Spectrum my freshman year. During Art Spectrum, we took an introductory unit in sculpture, so I wanted to keep doing that for an entire year by taking Sculpture 1. So far, we’ve worked with clay and paper mache. Using paper mache is somewhat hard, so just using clay makes each project more fun.

When sculpting, you start each piece off by making a drawing of your idea. Then you actually use clay to sculpt, whether you use tools or not. My favorite tool to use is one that looks like a needle because you can create better details that way. After you put it in the kiln and fire it overnight, you glaze it, glaze it again, and keep glazing it until you get the actual color that you want. 90% of my time in class is spent glazing. It’s the process that takes the longest.

Honestly, the most challenging part of sculpture is not achieving the vision you wanted, especially if you clearly visualized  your idea in your mind. I’ve tried making a monkey sculpture before but I didn’t properly score the pieces together. One of the pieces fell off during the firing, so it didn’t look good in the end.

However, I would advise anyone interested in sculpture to just keep trying. If you make something but it doesn’t turn out the way you wanted, just do it again. It’ll probably turn out much better the next time.”