Mia Rollow shaped lumps of pliable clay into a life-sized sculpture of a human head while she was a senior at Wilde Like High School in Columbia. Her teacher, Alan Cohen, shaped Rollow's talent in more subtle ways, guiding her methods and encouraging her ideas.
A joint exhibit of the Howard County Board of Education and Baltimore Clayworks this month explores the making of sculpture and the making of artists by displaying together clay art produced by students and by their teachers.
Works by Rollow and Cohen are on display with other Howard County teacher-student pairings at the Clayworks gallery in Baltimore, while creations by Clayworks teachers and their students can be viewed at the Howard County Board of Education Gallery in Ellicott City.
"It's a really sweet show because you see the connections and the influences of the teachers on the students," said Leigh Taylor Mickelson, Clayworks' program director. "It makes you believe in art education."
The exhibit, called Teaching & Talking Through the Clay II, showcases 22 teachers, 26 students and two guest artists.
For her piece, Rollow molded pronounced eyelids, a sharply defined nose, a cleft chin and wavy hair to create a dramatic sculpture. Cohen, who paints and sculpts when he is not teaching, submitted for the exhibit a head he made in a "more quiet and subtle" style. He said it complements and contrasts with the young woman's work.
Cohen does not usually show students what he makes with clay.
"I don't want them to be influenced by what I do," he said. "I demonstrate the techniques ... but I want them to bring their own personal aesthetic and exploration to what I set up."
Rollow, a freshman art major at the University of Maryland, College Park, said she was inspired by a photo of a sculpture by Camille Claudel (a sculptor in the late 1800s who was Rodin's mistress). Rollow also used anatomy books and her classmates for reference. Cohen showed her how to create the underlying structure and offered critiques during the project.
Rollow said of Cohen, "If he realizes you are serious about something, he'll push you. He'll help you create for yourself."
Several participants said it is important for teachers to give students the freedom to express themselves.
Audrey Fox Miller of Pikesville has been taking clay classes at Edward A. Myerberg Senior Center in Baltimore for five years. She said her instructor in clay, Jewell Gross Brennenman, is "the most extraordinary of them all."
"She gives us free range," said Miller, who has taken art classes for many years and began studying more seriously after she retired as a general contractor.
She said she finds the classroom environment invigorating. "When you are in a room with a lot of talent ... you just feel the energy," she said. "Sometimes your fingers just dance. You lose yourself completely."
In the exhibit, Miller has two small seated female figures, including one in a chair that she made out of metal and covered with fabric. Brennenman submitted two 18-inch-tall, thin clay rectangles decorated with patterns and finished with expressive clay heads and tiny clay feet. The "wallflowers," as she calls them, hang on a wall near Miller's work.
Curator Patrick Timothy Caughy said it was not necessary that the teachers' work closely resemble the students' pieces for the show.
"Part of what we do as teachers is to model, teach by example," he said. "I like the idea all of us in the show are peers, all of us are equals."
Caughy's irregularly shaped panel, decorated with geometric figures and many colors, hangs above small designs of storytellers and superheroes crafted by two Centennial Elementary School fifth-graders he taught.
"In an era where a lot of the stress in education is on quantifying data, there is another kind of knowing that comes through the arts," Caughy said. Clay can be an important tool for that, he said, because "students simply find it so expressive, so magical."
There are benefits for the teachers as well.
"Teaching often seems like a vitamin pill for my own work," said Brennenman, who teaches art at Clayworks and at senior centers in the Baltimore area. "I discover things sometimes when [the students] do.
"It's all about training your eyes and your mind, which is good at any age and experience level."
The exhibit at Clayworks, 5707 Smith Ave. in Baltimore, will run through Nov. 23. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Information: 410-578-1919. The exhibit at the Howard County Board of Education Gallery, 10910 Route 108 in Ellicott City, will run through Nov. 22. Hours are 8:30 am to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Information: 410-313-6634.