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Silvia Vega | Episode 763

Silvia Vega, born and raised in Guatemala, is currently a ceramic student at Lone Star College Montgomery, located near Houston, Texas, under the instruction of Professor Charles Wood. Silvia had the opportunity to explore various museums in Europe, finally settling down to live in Paris, France. Silvia had intentions of finally entering an art program, but the school she applied for had a waiting list of years! Despite these obstacles, Silvia’s love for art never waned. In 2017, at the age of 44, Silvia decided to finally fulfill her dream of pursuing an art degree. Silvia was captivated by her first ceramics class where she realized her passion was using clay as a canvas for her creativity. When Silvia’s hands aren’t busy caring for her three children, they are molding, sculpting, and drawing. Only recently has Silvia begun to enter her work into shows. In her second semester at Lone Star College Silvia won first place in a juried art show. Silvia has been published for three consecutive years in the school magazine, Swirl Magazine, which features selected students’ fine arts and writing. Silvia continues to pour her heart into her pottery as she explores various techniques and finds new ways to express her creativity.

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Why is it important just to be a person who shows up on time for school? Why does that matter?

I’m thinking about my kids, I think it’s part of the basics. Just having the opportunity to learn, you know, I don’t think many people value that. Coming from a country where not everybody has that opportunity, showing that you really value the process of learning, part of it is being there on time. It will serve you  as part of the discipline that you have to learn, not just for school but for everything.

Do you feel if you are going to learn from a person you should get to know that person instead of just show up and go?

I think it is an opportunity to know the person, especially in art. I think it gives you more chances to know the person in the sense that art is an expression and when you teach art you are not just teaching theory. I think my professor, the way he teaches is where he gives us the freedom of expressing ourselves and he also does the same thing with his pieces. So I think in that sense we know him. He says this often, When you make some thing right, now do 100.  So we have to repeat the process in order to excel.

Do you feel like it’s important to make bad work? I know we all want to make great work but do you feel like it’s important to make bad work, especially while you are in school?

Super important. In the first semester, there’s a wall that we have in our studio in the college and we call it the wailing wall. And this wall has a corner an if something did not meet the expectations then you have to throw it against the wall and just break it. In the beginning it was just hard for me to understand the process and there is so much that I love about clay and it’s part of it. I didn’t talk about this before but I am Christina and the analogy of clay in the bible is amazing to me, so part of destroying when it didn’t go well is part of the learning. You know how you have to be able to meet your own standard and it’s not easy. It’s a way of letting go. Clay has taught me so many things.

Did you have to face a bit of fear coming back to college as an adult?

You know what, maybe the first day, but then you learn that at a certain age kids reach a certain maturity level and you can look at them in the eye and you treat them as adults and there’s so many people of so many different ages in my class that I didn’t feel really anything. There’s people that are probably around 80 and there’s people that are around 16 years old in my class.  There’s people from so many different backgrounds and different ages, there’s kids that have started a program with dual credits and there are potters who have been there and are there as continuing education.

Do you feel that it is important to have humility in a classroom setting?

It is. It is and that’s why it’s important to have pieces that went wrong, you know. Destroying a piece that went wrong, it’s like, there’s goes your time, your ego, and all your expectations. You have to throw them to the wall and it is such a humbling process to know that you invested time in this piece, but at the end this is clay. And you have no control over the process, especially to glazing. Once it goes into the kiln it is not in your hands any more.

What is your favorite piece to make? What form in your favorite form?

I really like lidded jars. I like lidded jars and I like sgraffito. There was a project that we did at school where we had to create a piece with a lid and sculptural knob on top of it and I loved exploring different ways of creating that knob. So it is like a never ending story of ideas.

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