Seattle Girls School
By Hannah Voss
What do transparent and opaque mean? How about stencil and sgraffito? What happens to glass, metal and other solids when they are heated and then cooled to room temperature? How is glass made and how is color introduced? What happens when you "do it my way" rather than follow the proscribed procedure?
Thanks to a grant from the Enamelist Society, twelve middle school girls can now answer these questions with first hand knowledge. They participated in afive week Enamel Internship that I taught at The Seattle Girls School, an independent middle school, whose mission is to empower girls to think critically and seek creative solutions to real world problems in a challenging academic environment.
The first two sessions of the internship were spent learning basics such as properly cleaning the copper, the reason for and application of counter enamel and the application of an even base coat. During the third session I demonstrated the use of stencils, sgraffito and transparents over the basecoat. The girls experimented with these techniques on circles and pendants. During the final sessions they were able to work more or less independently using what they learned to design light switch plates, small bowls and rectangles which I mounted together in a frame to commemorate the workshop.
I learned that middle schoolers are enthusiastic, eager to learn and full of energy. I felt that part of the learning experience was for each girl to fire her own work. They were cautious and hesitant in entering their pieces into the kiln. As a result, the kiln door was held open considerably longer than usual. This caused much cooling and increased the firing time per piece. We had only one kiln. Among other things, the girls learned patience.
At the conclusion of an internship, the school requests that the students fill out an evaluation form not only evaluating the teacher, but the experience as a whole. I was able to sneak a look at what some of them wrote. Most concluded that they had learned to enamel, that they liked it and that it was the best internship they had taken. It is my hope that from experiences such as this the next generation of enamelists will come and if not, at least an educated audience.
