At any given lunch period, junior Alice Sowa can likely be found in the ceramics room, working away. Sometimes she is sitting behind the wheel, shaping a lump of terracotta clay into a smooth sphere or dipping a fired piece into a sea blue glaze, her favorite color to work with. She spends most of her free time at school adding new pieces to her collection of nearly a hundred, some of which she is planning to sell.

“I’m someone who really doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty. My jeans are always covered in something arty,” Sowa said.

Sowa is in the process of opening an online store to sell her pottery and other art such as crochet and origami. She is planning to use the platform Etsy, an online marketplace where vendors sell their art such as jewelry and clothing directly to customers.

Though Sowa also loves drawing and painting, she believes that she really excels at creating sculpture and ceramics.

“My mind thinks in a very three dimensional way, so I am able to make the things that my mind actually thought of in

stead of trying to be flat on a piece of paper,” Sowa said.

In the past, Sowa has sold her pieces in the ceramics department’s annual sale in June, which is hosted by ceramics teacher Liz Lauter. This inspired her to take her sales further and open her own business.

Sowa has had success selling her more practical items such as dog bowls, candle stands, and pitchers, rather than her sculptural pieces.

She is currently working on a pot which is designed to hold a succulent plant.

She began exploring three dimensional art in ceramics her freshman year. She is enrolled in three art classes: AP ceramics, Drawing and Painting, and Artist’s Voice, a Wednesday night class.

One of Sowa’s favorite aspects of her art is the imperfection.

“I love taking something from my mind and putting it on a form and not caring if it is perfect or not,” Sowa said.

Though she enjoys sculpting practical pieces, Sowa considers herself to be very adventurous because she always experiments with different techniques.

“I’m experimenting with a double wall to make a doughnut and figuring out different carving ways to make things pop in and out,” Sowa said.

Sowa said that it typically takes her two days to complete a piece, but she sometimes goes further to incorporate intricate details.

“I am really into mixing different medias together,” Sowa said, pointing to a pile of fired triangles. She explained that she would combine these ceramic triangles with different types of metal such as tin and copper to create a geometric sculpture.

According to Sowa, many of her pieces are inspired by nature. Whether it carving graphic floral patterns into the clay, or basing her colors and forms off of the environment.

“[In one of my pieces], I will use a blue glaze like the ocean and a green-brown glaze to represent the mountains,” Sowa said.

Some of her pieces unintentionally begin to resemble parts of nature, according Sowa. After completion Sowa saw that one piece looked like bushel of artichokes and another looked like a coral reef.

Sowa said that she believes accidents sometimes lead to the most unconventional and creative pieces.

“The glaze always reacts differently. It is fun to see how the piece will turn out,” Sowa said.