Mrs. Jessica Clermont:
Lansingburgh High School :
Creative Crafts, Ceramics, and Sculpture:
233-6806:
Hello
This will be my fourth year at Lansingburgh. I am so happy that Creative Crafts has become
popular because I really do enjoy teaching it.
I attended SUNY Potsdam where I studied studio arts such as drawing, painting, photography,
sculpture and ceramics. I graduated with a concentration in Sculpture.
Later, I moved to Buffalo and attended Buffalo State College to obtain my teaching certification
for visual arts. I student taught in Buffalo and then moved back to the Capitol Region.
In November of 2005, I began teaching for Lansingburgh. I taught both studio art, which I was
familiar with, and Creative Crafts with which I knew nothing about. I tell my students all the time
you don't learn how to basket weave at a college taking traditional studio classes, one would
need to attend an institution for crafts.
I taught myself how to weave, how to cut and solder stained glass, I was already crocheting and
making jewelry for craft fairs so I applied this knowledge, and learned the rest. Crafts are
functional pieces of art work....my ceramics and sculpture background were an absolute
necessity. Sooner than later everything came together and now I have the pleasure of teaching
one section of ceramics and sculpture students.
When it came time to get my Masters I attended SUNY New Paltz. I concentrated in ceramics
and wrote my thesis about making art work in the creative crafts classroom in Lansingburgh.
When I wrote my thesis I knew I had to write about something I was truly passionate about. I
was teaching crafts and missing my studio arts. So changed my teaching approach and now I
teach creative crafts as if it were a studio class, which is probably what I should have been doing
the whole time.
My mission, for all of my students, is to realize they are creating art work no matter what
material they are given. For example, I introduce mosaics to the class, we learn about the
history, we look at images in books of ancient and contemporary mosaics, we learn about the
tile--the mortor--the grout, we discuss popular uses for mosaics, and then the students make
their art work using the tools and information I provided them with. In turn the students value
what they created as art not just a coaster.
