Young Potter's Work Featured in National Exhibit

One Cranston fifth grader is getting national attention for her pottery.

Her art is included in a national exhibit at a national ceramics conference after she was picked out of thousands of submissions.

Alison Carranza, 11, a student at l, has been taking ceramics classes at for three years.

Her teacher, Shannon Casey, designed a new class entitled "Ceramics: NCECA Bound," and based the class on the prestegious Naitonal Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts' annual conference.

It was the first time that Casey submitted her students' work. A total of 1,134 students in grades K-12 submitted entires to the exhibit and just 150 were selected, including Carranza.

"The NCECA class was developed to move kids beyond clay as a hobby to the art of ceramics, to further investigate the wonders and versatility of the medium for kids to be able to develop their own language, their own voice through clay pieces," Casey said. "Having attended NCECA in years past we were inspired to ‘pump up’ our own classroom challenges for our students because we knew the maximum potential had not been realized, including our potential to teach.”

Carranza's inclusion in the exhibit is a distinct honor, especially for someone who has just three years of ceramics experience. She is one of 15 students chosen out of 106 entries in the K-5 category. Her work, a bowl, will be on display for the three days the conference runs in Seattle, Wash., from March 28 to 31.

When Alison got her start at Artists’ Exchange through its summer camps a few years ago, she was enrolled in both art and theater camps but her focus quickly turned to pottery, which she now describes as her favorite medium. “I like shaping a pot until I get the shape I want and painting it with my favorite colors.”

The bowl is based on one she previously made that ended up exloding in the kiln.

“I made a ladder and a bunch of little people out of the piece that broke off and added them on so they looked like they were climbing out of the bowl. The crack looked like a door.”

The hardest part of handling the wheel is centering. The time it takes to center the piece depends on its size. A small one can take five minutes. Larger ones can take an entire 90-minute class.

When asked what he thinks about all of this, Alison’s father simply says, “’We’re proud of her."