Community Arts Teacher Spotlight | !Artes comunitarias– ¡Enfoque del profesor!
Meet a member of the Community Arts teaching team, Denis Licul | Les presentamos a Denis Licul, una profesora de Artes comunitarias.
Clay Art Center’s Community Arts programming is built on the strong partnerships with local organizations in the surrounding area like local schools, community centers, and assisted living facilities, through which we are able to achieve our mission to make clay accessible to everyone. The amazing instructors who teach these programs are great sources of inspiration as well as knowledge, guiding their students through the ceramic process and creating space for self-expression and healing. One of our longest-serving Community Arts teachers, Denis Licul, spoke to us about her time at Clay Art Center and what it means to her to connect with students through clay.
Denis’s first experiences with clay came when she was attending college to become an art teacher in Croatia, where she grew up. While Denis worked in clay for a few projects in a sculpture class, her primary focus was print-making, and she graduated fully intending to pursue that medium. She purchased a printing press, and worked on paper for a year and a half before finding herself drawn back to clay. “I was scared of the blank paper,” Denis remembered, “even though I really liked the process of print-making. So I said, let me just try a little bit in clay. I bought a kiln, found some friends who were ceramicists, and they helped me with my first steps working in clay.” Denis’s first forays into ceramics reflected her print-making background; she explored surface decoration and glazing, even using her printing press to pull out clay slabs. In her studio in Croatia, Denis found that it was difficult to work on both mediums at the same time (both created a lot of mess). Her first exhibition was a combination of clay work and prints, but ultimately the tactility and responsiveness of clay won Denis over, and it became her primary medium.
Since her start as an art teacher in her home town of Labin, Croatia, and then coming to Clay Art Center nearly two decades ago, Denis has taught a wide variety of Community Arts classes. She worked with the middle school Around the World in Clay students, which is where Denis first taught Emily Maldonado, now a Community Arts teacher herself. Denis has also taught the afterschool program at the Thomas A. Edison School here in Port Chester, one-time classes for those with visual impairments in partnership with VISIONS at Selis Manor, and a professional development class for teachers in the Port Chester school district, which Denis conducted entirely in Croatian so that the teachers could experience what it feels like to be in a classroom where the language of instruction is not their own. Last but not least, for the past 16 years Denis has been teaching a weekly class called Clay Expressions, which is offered in partnership with Cancer Support Community Greater NY & CT to people diagnosed with cancer and their loved ones.
Denis highlighted that her favorite part of working with all of these different students is helping them tap into their creativity. “I think that everyone is creative, and everyone enjoys creating something,” Denis said, “and it’s just fun to facilitate that play. And clay is easy for that because it’s very natural, we all played with dirt when we were kids!” For some, that play is serious; in the Clay Expressions class, clay can have a healing, therapeutic effect for those whose lives are touched by cancer. Denis notes how rewarding it is to hear that people find the class beneficial, sometimes even coming to class directly after their treatments: “It’s been really amazing to work with this group over the years, the hundreds of people who have taken classes, some of them for years. When they work with clay, they’re present, they feel normal and creative, and it’s empowering.” Denis also noted how important it is to continue offering these classes, and to provide opportunities for people facing challenges to ground themselves while also exploring their creativity through a medium like clay. Clay Art Center plans to continue to expand these kinds of programs that make clay accessible to everyone, and we couldn’t do it without the passionate support of our community and instructors like Denis!
“There are many stories, and many amazing people. I had a couple, husband and wife, who took classes for 4 or 5 years, maybe longer. He was blind and had cancer. It was amazing to see how they connected, working together with clay, and how they cared about each other. They were inspirational.” - Denis Licul
