The Art 231 Beginning Ceramics class built a teapot sculpture, a group project that the class was graded on, that will remain on display on the left side of Talbot. Jeff Brown, assistant professor of art, gave his art students the choice to create either a teapot or a totem. The class chose the teapot form, which is used in various cultures.

“The teapot was a celebration of ceramics,” Brown said. “The students were in it for the long hall.”

The teapot display was made by Brown and his students: Beth Bonvillain, freshman from Schiever; Andre Kelly, fine arts junior from New Orleans; Ashley Landry, marketing sophomore from Thibodaux; Terry Marchese, Christina Oubre, birth-to-five early intervention education senior from Scheiver; Alexis Pitre, art education junior from Cut Off; Patti Stamper, freshman from Thibodaux; and Alex Wagner, criminal justice junior from Thibodaux.

“It was a fun and exciting project,” Oubre said. “At first, we did not know how it would turn out. We questioned whether or not we could do it.”

Oubre said that everything was trial and error. “It was exciting to see the outcome. It was a successful project.”

The teapot was made of an internal structure called an armature, a metal frame on top of which the ceramics are applied using adhesive. The technique that was used was mosaic, which is placing different things together.

“The teapot is like a big jigsaw puzzle,” Brown said. “The students actually used what I taught them in the class for this project so it represented what they learned in my class.”

The students who created this teapot have the faces of the students that molded it on the teapot. Brown says that the faces were brought in for fun. The faces are used to represent the people involved. It is the students’ signatures.