By B.C. Manion
The girls are sitting in a semi-circle, watching intently as Diana Murcar sits at the potter’s wheel, demonstrating how to take a ball of clay and transform it into a pot.
This is Day 3 of a summer arts class at HiBrow Art Gallery, 14127 Seventh St., in downtown Dade City.
And this is one place where girls are getting a kick out of getting their hands dirty.
The clay-making class that they’re in is just one of a series of week-long classes being offered at the gallery, which is part of Dade City Center for the Arts Inc.
When Murcar finishes reviewing how to use the wheel, it doesn’t take 12-year-old Nell Curry long to take her place at the wheel and begin working her clay.
She looks like a natural.
Meanwhile, Amy Sandy, 12 and Jaiden Ryker, 8, are using two tabletop wheels in another part of the gallery. Ryker’s fingers work quickly as the wheel spins; Sandy wasn’t having such good luck. The wheel was barely chugging. Chalk that up to a technical problem.
No big deal. These girls were having fun in a class where they get to make pots, plates, cups and other items from clay.
India Alfonso, 14, was hanging out at the studio as a volunteer.
She’ll do whatever the teacher needs.
Murcar said she’s known Alfonso, who will be heading to Pasco High in the fall, since the teenager was in kindergarten.
Alfonso said she enjoys helping the students and doesn’t mind doing whatever else that is needed. She likes being at the studio.
“I’ve always been interested in art,” said Alfonso. Besides, she added: “I also get to make stuff, too,”
Murcar, an art teacher at Centennial Elementary since 1987, is glad that Stuart Marcus asked her to teach the summer art classes.
“There are not a lot of opportunities in this community currently, for children, in the visual arts. There’s a dance studio nearby and there’s lots of things for athletics and such, but there’s not too much for the arts,” Murcar said.
“This is actually something I’ve been wanting to do, but I’ve never really had the facilities in the community,” said the woman who has organized many art shows in Dade City and Zephyrhills.
She’s hoping these summer classes will give the students a chance to express themselves artistically and will help to cultivate in them an abiding interest in the arts.
She hopes they have fun, exploring and experimenting with different kinds of materials, she said.
“I hope it develops a lifelong passion with creating things with their hands and supporting the arts and being involved in the arts,” Murcar said.
She also hopes that over the long-term more arts programs will become available for children in the community.
Early experiences with art can leave a deep impression, said Murcar, who recalls having an art teacher in first grade, who – for whatever reason – was suddenly gone.
“I spent the rest of my elementary career going, ‘Where is the art teacher?’ ” She said.
Murcar didn’t have another art teacher until she was in middle school.
For her, doing art was a way to stand out among her peers.
“I was always the class artist. To me, it was always amazing how much they liked the things that I drew,” Murcar said.
The summer session started last week with clay making and will focus this week on drawing. Next week, it will be painting. The week after that, sculpture. The final week will feature cartooning.
There are still some slots available in the classes, which are open to anyone 5 years old or older. The classes are Monday through Friday, 1-5 p.m. The weekly tuition is $125.
For more information call the HiBrow Art Gallery, (352) 521-3823.
