ASHLEY BALL
CERAMICS
As of currently, my inspiration for continuing making art and playing with clay is my love for the art form. I have continually admired artists and their ability to create beautiful pieces out of nothing, and I always had so many ideas in my head, but my skill set never matched my ambition. Clay, and wheel throwing specifically, has been a way for me to express my ideas and transfer them into something tangible. I am drawn to circles and swirls, forms and designs that flow. and could continue endlessly. Fiction, fantasy, and mental health are also very inspiring to me and I hope to start incorporating that into by work soon. I am still learning and trying to find my niche, but that is the beauty of art - it is forever changing and evolving.
I fell in love with ceramics in the last semester of my senior year of high school, and I hate that I waited that long to try it. Regardless, after taking a year off between high school and college, I registered for Northeastern Junior College and was very excited to learn that NJC had a ceramics class, so I signed up automatically. It took some time to get back into ceramics, especially since I am a left-handed thrower and at the time I signed up they only had right-handed wheels, but it was a fantastic learning experience and I fell in love all over again. I continued learning, working, and practicing pottery during my three years at NJC, and even took a summer ceramics class at Red Rocks Community College. When my time at NJC was over, I bought myself a pottery wheel, found a kiln to do firings (which I would eventually own) and began working on ceramics outside of the class dynamic. While I have been doing ceramics for a solid four years now, I am always learning new things from fellow potters. As an artist, we are always both a learner and a teacher, regardless how long we have been working on our craft.
