I pulled a red card from the deck and stared at it with disappointment. I reluctantly grabbed my blue gingerbread figurine and moved only one space on the “Candy Land” board. I was shoulder to shoulder with my classmate, whose turn was next, all of us packed into a room even more cramped than the ones we’d been pulled out of. I watched as my classmate pulled a card, advancing ahead of me on the board.
I felt frustrated, not because of my move, but because of the way I was dragged out of class to recite my r’s, s’s, and t’s over and over again. They never felt right rolling off my tongue. My speech teacher kept trying to find new ways to help and make the process fun, but I always felt like there was a better solution: to not talk at all.
Throughout middle and high school, I embraced that solution. I coasted by not speaking. People always knew me as the quiet girl. That nickname became a part of me that I deeply hated because I felt it held me back.
Art became a replacement for my voice. If I ever experienced art block, it felt like the end of the world. It had been my voice for so long that without it, I was completely lost. I especially felt this when coming to college. The quiet part of me seemed to clash with the part of me that wanted to thrive.
When I visited the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery last week, I came face-to-face with a mix of hybrid animals that strangely reminded me of myself. The 81st College Ceramic Annual, “Means to an End,” explores the fluidity of the ceramic form. Instead of conforming to the standards of traditional ceramic art, each artist took the medium and deliberately challenged our expectations. One artist that really caught my attention was Debra Broz and her porcelain animals.
Broz grew up in rural Missouri; from a young age, her family home was filled with a collection of mass-produced porcelain animals that her grandmother would leisurely paint. She always adored these pieces, despite their origin as mass produced replication. Paying homage to her grandmother, her art practice consists of finding ceramic animals in second-hand stores, taking them apart and recombining them to create hybridized animals.
The porcelain figures sat on ornately green shelves in the exhibition, as if they were displayed in a home. The uncanniness of these creatures immediately captures the viewer’s attention. There is a horse, a bunny, a lion with human hands, a dolphin mixed with a deer, and a large blob of other various animals.
Looking at her work, I instantly thought about how our identity is a fluid form that we are constantly reinventing. Her process dismantled two very different animals and reconstructed them into something new and imbued with newfound wholeness. We often have qualities that conflict, but we must find a way to navigate that challenge and fit those different pieces of ourselves together.
Before coming to college, someone had asked me if I was going to stay with my quiet ways. I enthusiastically told them, “absolutely not.” I was incredibly confident that I would reinvent myself. Instead, I felt like Broz’s “Dolphin Deer”: Wanting to express myself while also being incredibly shy felt as ridiculous as being a dolphin mixed with a deer. The parts did not seem to fit together at all. I wanted to talk, to discuss, to ask questions, but that part of me that was still the quiet girl held me back. I would walk out of class my first semester, frustrated, and run back to art. It was still the only way I could truly express myself.
I still felt like that little girl who was in speech classes, angry that she couldn’t talk normally. I really thought, that first semester, that I could never change — that I was a porcelain hybrid of all these constantly clashing parts that I could never get to work together.
Thankfully, I began to interact with art in new ways my first year of college. I realized that I could transform myself through my love of art. It started to amplify my voice, rather than replace it.
It has become a part of my major, art history. It has become a main part of the columns I write and the graphics I draw. It has brought me into clubs where many others share the same passion for art. However, this revelation took patience. I didn’t instantly realize that my love for art could help me meet new people and express myself.
Thinking back to the exhibition, creating these creatures required a significant amount of patience and attention to detail. The way Broz combined the animals was completely seamless. She used ceramic restoration techniques to cut the porcelain figures, fill in the gaps, sculpt parts and paint to match the separate pieces. It is such a delicate form that needs patience to thrive.
After hearing about Broz’s work and process, I realized that patience is extremely important. A part of me is still that little girl who sat in a small room playing “Candy Land” or “Ants In The Pants,” repeating speech drills for hours, but I am also a grown-up finally exploring my passion for art in new ways.
I realized that talking may never come easily to me, and that having patience can allow me to express myself more. I found art to be a way to help rather than as a replacement. Maybe I am Broz’s “Dolphin Deer.. I am a combination of all these conflicting aspects, yet through patience and work, I can become whole.
Meiya Rollins PO ’29 believes, like Michelangelo, that art takes time – most of that time being snack breaks and watching “Good Mythical Morning.”
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