A new teacher at City College and full-time faculty member of the ceramics department, Karen Tepaz, shared her stories and passions for teaching ceramics. With her love for pottery and wheel throwing, she invites students in on her ways of mastering technical skills as well as her personal techniques, allowing them to gain the experience necessary to not only pursue ceramics as a hobby, but to have the ability and knowledge to further pursue ceramics as a career. 

Her journey began when she was required to take an art elective for her major in College. Having never taken an art class at the time, she chose ceramics as a “fun class”. 

“I just totally fell in love with it, and I kind of havent stopped working since 2002.” Tepaz said.

Being able to understand students’ curiosity and creativity, and to make her students’ imaginations come to fruition is something that is very important to her. Tepaz spoke about how she creates a very open space for creativity and ensures all of her students’ voices and ideas are heard. 

She teaches by giving her students a prompt as a guide. She then allows them to take it with a grain of salt, in order for their minds to roam free and use their own life experiences to create something personal to them. 

Along the hallway, just outside of the classroom, a big glass display showcases students’ art pieces. Bowls, vases, plates and cups are lit up by spotlights reflecting the hard work students put into their pottery. Passion runs through the sculptures all around the room.

“I like to start with the fundamentals,” Tepaz said, referring to her teaching style. 

Pinch, coil, soft slab and hard slab are some techniques she first introduces to the students to help them understand the material and thickness and weight of the clay. 

“I really focus on escaping the two dimensionality that people are constantly surrounded by.” Tepaz said. 

She goes into how being able to separate from screens or paper and disregarding the flatness that faces people artistically, and how that can be challenging for the students to grasp, especially at first. With hopes of helping students comprehend sculpting and molding with their hands, she shows them how to think of space, volume, and weight to help the students really understand their material. 

In the fall, Tepaz hosts a ceramics holiday show to display and sell art pieces from her students. She is in the process of building a scholarship with the ceramics department, to send students abroad to study ceramics. The holiday sale offers 60 percent of the proceeds to students who sold their pieces, and 40 percent that goes to help support the study abroad program. They are able to make the rest of the money for the program by accepting all proceeds from donated pottery, or pottery from Tepaz herself.  

From teaching ceramics everyday to hosting her holiday show and starting up a scholarship for students, Tepaz has her hands full and is working hard to better the education and further explore the artistic minds of the students at City College.

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