AOM: Lilly Hartman
March 15, 2016
Create, critique, improve, repeat. Ceramics is a continuous cycle. The completion of one piece only leads to the inspiration for the next. Senior Lilly Hartman said that in ceramics you must constantly evaluate and improve your work in order to be truly creative.
Hartman started taking ceramics her sophomore year. According to Hartman, she took ceramics in order to be with her friends, but she said that she has come a long way since Ceramics I sophomore year.
According to Hartman, she loves ceramics because of the way her brain and hands work in harmony to create her vision.
“I really like building and making things with my hands. I have for a long time,” Hartman said. “Ceramics is just so based on what you can make your hands do with your brain.”
According to Hartman, ceramics can be challenging, which is what makes it enjoyable. Her favorite project was in Ceramics II, when students were assigned to create two teapots. After analyzing the teapots and finding flaws, students were asked to make two more teapots incorporating the feedback from the previous ones.
“It was a learn from your mistakes project,” Hartman said.
Hartman said she applies the same mentality from the teapot project to all of her work.
“I like to make something, see what’s wrong with it and try again. Maybe I still see a lot of things wrong with it, but I can see that it is better than my first one,” Hartman said.
Hartman’s mother, Laura Hartman, described Lilly as a persevering person. According to Laura, Lilly uses this same resilient attitude that she uses in ceramics in other aspects of her life as well.
“She has a job. She works in a restaurant, in the back, and it has not always been easy but she has been very driven,” Laura said. “She won’t usually quit. She will usually try to figure out how to make something work.”
Senior Joey Gonnella is currently completing an independent study with Lilly. According to Gonella, having the ability to work in the same space everyday, he has been able to really get to know Hartman as both a person and an artist.
“As an artist Lilly has a really good work ethic. She always has a list of things that she wants to do or create. She is really good about working on stuff. She mostly does mugs and pottery stuff. I like her more creative work. She did this cup that has clay noses all around the edge of it,” Joey said.
Hartman said that her English class recently listened to an episode of National Public Radio’s “This American Life,” hosted by presenter Ira Glass, in which Glass talked about how in order to be creative, you have to look at what you made and see what’s wrong with it.
“For someone who is just making and making and making at a high school level, that is so important to me to be able to look at what I have made,” Hartman said. “There is obviously so much that I need to work on, but to see what I need to work on, and then hopefully I can come to an agreement with the clay.”
