Ceramics as an art form was one of the most influential practices that pushed me into a study of the visual arts beyond high school. Given my broader interests in a variety of creative practices including architecture, graphic design, and painting, it was a practice that was given less focus than I had initially anticipated through my undergraduate studies in studio arts at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse . This independent study was designed to refresh the skillsets that I knew would be necessary to successfully practice and teach ceramics and pottery as an artist and educator. These studies renewed my interest in the art form, created professional relationships in my community with local ceramicists and ceramics studios, and reinforced my confidence to teach proper practices and methods as a visual arts teacher. In addition to the study of ceramics-based methods, it was also my goal to incorporate the information that I had gathered into a website that could be used for teaching and documenting. Although this website did not come to fruition in the anticipated sense, it began the larger pursuit to document my curricular projects and classroom information on a personal website.

Below you will find an overview and outline of my areas of focus during this study, a variety of student artwork that demonstrates the instruction of these included methods, and additional studies of my online archive of instructional information.