Sculpting was brought to a whole new level when Visual Arts teacher Raul Monarrez’s first period art class started working with earthware clay three months ago. The class was soon joined by Visual Arts teacher Eduardo Saucedos’s classes.

“It was a new experience for me and the students. I didn’t have the facilities to do it. I enjoyed it as much as the students did and they produced very creative work,” Monarrez said.

Using nothing but their hands and a few wooden tools, students managed to handcraft cups, bowls, jewelry boxes and personal sculptures with unique designs. The process took time and was a challenge.

“It was frustating when you couldn’t mold the clay exactly the way you wanted it, but it wasn’t too hard. You just have to be very patient,” senior Amber Alvarez said.

The clay wasn’t manageable at first and was very messy. Students had to leave their clay wrapped in wet paper towels overnight to make sure it was soft enough to mold and bend.

The 45 minute class did not offer enough time to finish the sculptures and students had to wrap half-done products to continue sculpting the following day. Some sculptures fell apart overnight and students had to start all over again.

Once all the sculptures are molded to the right shape, they are put away in a room to be dried under a trash bag for two weeks in order to avoid cracks within the product. If the sculptures have air bubbles they explode in the kiln.

When the sculptures are dry they are fired in a kiln. The first fire is called the greenware and it prepares the sculpture to be glazed or painted.

Painting the sculptures is a difficult process. The colors undergo a chemical reaction during the second fire, sisque, so painting a sculpture a certain color is not a 100 percent guarantee that a student will get the desired color.

The chemical reactions the colors go through make it impossible for students to mix colors. In a certain situation, if a student wanted to use black on a sculpture the color before the second fire was actually red.

Sculpting with clay is a difficult taks but it was something new to the art classes. Even if many of the sculptures were not successful it was definitely a new experience for all.

“It’s fun using clay. The students liked it very much and it shows their personallity very well. Overall it went great,” Saucedo said.