The ceramic studio sits within the Visual Arts building where kilns, glazes and aprons await for ceramic students to cultivate their next pieces.
21-year-old art major Everardo Rodriguez grew up as the son of a musician, flipping through books of manga and taking art classes in middle school and high school; he has always been pulled in an artistic direction.
“When you grow up in middle school and high school they teach you about Leonardo and Picasso and all those great artists,” Rodriguez said. “It’s pretty daunting.”
He drew consistently growing up and took ceramic classes since middle school and high school, but Rodriguez said ceramics drew him in the most. He has has cultivated ceramic work at Citrus for the past two and a half years.
Ceramics professor Michael Hillman said Rodriguez stood out because he was willing to learn and was intrigued with the medium both inside and outside of class.
Rodriguez began in Beginning Ceramics, moved forward to the intermediate class and then to the advanced class. Now he works in the ceramic studio as a student assistant. He helps Hillman with the studio and is learning about working a kiln.
“He was very curious,” Hillman said. “Curious is a good thing for an artist. He was always asking questions, ‘how do we do this and why is this blue, how do we get this blue and how are the glazes mixed up?’”
While Beginning Ceramics is an introduction to the medium and focused on the curriculum, Hillman said students who move up are able to express their creativity more freely.
That is where Rodriguez discovered his “signature” look to all his pieces, using sodium silicate. The chemical compound dries the clay out on the surface to create a wooden appearance on the clay.
Becoming a ceramicist does not happen overnight. Rodriguez said being an artist relies on practice.
“I feel the difficulty relies on innovating and refining your techniques since a lot of the difficulty is just getting better, getting to the next step,” Rodriguez said.
The stigma of “starving artist” was another consistent thought Rodrigues had, but never altered his decision to change his career path.
“Personally, I don’t have a fear towards it. I think I kind of embrace it,” Rodriguez said.
He said artists in this generation have an advantage of sharing their work with the power of social media. Since this generation relies heavily on media platforms like Instagram or Twitter, Rodriguez said sharing art is easier.
“A lot has changed about the art industry,” Rodriguez said. “It’s very inspiring to see people like that succeed.”
Though several students take ceramics in high school, Hillman said they underestimate the ceramics classes at Citrus.
“Once they start they realize it’s not as easy as they think,” Hillman said. “The process of throwing on the wheel is very difficult and it takes almost an entire semester to get to the point where they start to feel comfortable on the wheel.”
Since most students taking ceramics only take it to fulfill the GED requirement, Hillman said there are not a lot of returners for Intermediate and Advanced Ceramics.
Though he wants to own his own studio one day, Rodriguez said he plans to finish his education at an art school at Alfred University in New York or at Cal State San Bernardino. Rodriguez said both schools have a good ceramics department.
Hillman said there are plenty of jobs for people in the art community.
“You know what I tell the students, if you’re good at what you do you can always find a job,” Hillman said.
