Ceramics Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Cicadas: A Loud Insect For Emerging Artists

This year millions of cicadas emerged for their once-in-17-years mating season in West Virginia. The insect phenomenon inspired one state artist, who uses cicadas in her artwork.

Cicadas are oval shaped, winged insects that can be as long as three inches. They can be black, brown or green, often with red or white eyes. Their mating calls are thought to sound like “a hissing jet.”

“There’s like, a lot of times that I hear people say, “Oh, my God, these things are so annoying,”” said West Virginia artist Jessie McClanahan. “They just scream all the time, or people are scared of them.”

McClanahan is a 26-year-old ceramic artist based in Charleston. Her work has a natural, organic look – often including plants or insects, specifically cicadas.

“I really love insects. When I was a kid, I was convinced that they were my best friends.”

McClanahan wears her hair in two braids, with thick bangs across her forehead. She has detailed insect tattoos — one of which is a cicada — covering her right shoulder.

“I need their screens to go to sleep. Sometimes, when I leave the South, and I can’t sleep, I have this YouTube video saved on my phone,” she said. “It’s an Appalachian summer nights, and it just has a bunch of cicadas screaming in the background.”

And in the last few years, McClanahan found a way to incorporate cicadas in her ceramics.

“I take cicada shells, and I cast them in clay slip. And then I paint them.”

The cicada shells are actually the skin or exo-skeleton the insect sheds when it emerges from underground. Jessie has gathered shells over the years just from living in the Mountain State, and her friends also find shells for her, too.

This year McClanahan was selected for the emerging artist fellowship for the Tamarack Foundation of the Arts — she is one of five artists chosen in the state. Her cicadas are featured in her work through the fellowship.

In her studio, which is beneath Taylor Books on Capitol Street in Charleston, Jessie dips her cicada shells in the “clay slip” which is the consistency of a mud puddle. She fires the shells twice in a kiln, and in between each fire is when she adds detail to the little creatures, which typically remain a neutral clay color.

She starts by sanding down any fingerprints or rough edges.

“These things are really delicate, so I have to use a fine touch,” McClanahan said while taking cicadas out of the kiln. “This one’s actually a really nice one. He has all his legs. Some of them are missing legs or like their heads are a little wonky.”

Jessie joked that she spends so much time with the cicadas that they take on their own personalities.

“Just like the way that they’re sitting like some of them, their heads are kinda like, obscured by their little claws a little bit more, or some of them like have their claws spread out more and they look sassy or shy.”

She also covers the shells several times with clay and paint to prepare them for the kiln again and to also add detail.

“So I started off with the eyes, and I feel like that determines your personality a lot, too,” McClanahan said.

Cicadas have five eyes — two main eyes and three on top of their heads — which actually help them see the light through the soil so they know when to emerge.

She said her cicadas are not “hyper-realistic” but a loose interpretation, as they are still pieces of art.

She uses several different paint brushes to create texture and depth.

“So right now I’m painting on their little underbellies,” McClanahan said.

McClanahan’s ceramic “web” with cicadas attached.

She first started using cicadas in her artwork in a college class, mostly out of curiosity, but now she is on a mission to rebrand the insects through her work.

“I want people to love them as much as I love them. Like, they’re unabashedly themselves, you know, and they’re these little creatures that spend all this time underground,” McClanahan said. “And then they finally come out of their ground, and they’re like, “Hey, I’m here.””

Jessie’s ceramics professor at West Virginia State University, Molly Erlandson, was actually there when Jessie thought to cover cicadas in clay.

“I’m looking at one right now. I mean, they’re amazing, unique,” Erlandson said.

Erlandson said she has never seen it done before.

The natural world also plays a part in McClanahan’s other work as a ceramic artist. All of her ceramics are earth-tone colors, ranging from everyday items like mugs and bowls to abstract sculptures. Rather than using a potter’s wheel, all of her pieces are hand shaped, which McClanahan said is more time-intensive, but allows for more one-of-a-kind pieces.

Her signature sculptures look like a clay web in a rounded shape or vessel, sometimes containing plants or flowers or even with cicadas attached to the “webbing.” Erlandson said she interprets the webs as McClanahan’s reaction to her environment.

“She talks a lot about the terrain of West Virginia — how she grew up here, how she is sort of in love with the look of the land, and I see her work as greatly reflecting that,” Erlandson said.

McClanahan said the life cycle of the cicada is representative to her of what is happening in Appalachia right now — when the cicada emerges from the ground it sheds its shell and goes through a “rebirth” and “growth,” charting the region’s process of change.

“We have traditionally made all of our money off of coal mines. That’s not as feasible right now,” she said. “So we see all this change happening within our communities. And like, man, some of it’s not for good, but I see some good happening. We’re going through change, we’re going through a rebirth in some areas.”

To see more of Jessie McClanahan’s work click here.

One Appalachian Potter's Twist On The Craft: Digging Clay

In rural Preston County, West Virginia, potter Mel Sword’s house is located at the end of a gravel road, near a road called “Wildflower Way” and a creek that feeds into the Cheat River. His home nestles rolling fields of green grass, and behind that are mounds of dirt, clay that to Sword is half the reason he bought this property about ten years ago.

In a special report exploring folkways traditions, as part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Project, Caitlin Tan spent time with Sword to see how he is leaning on an old tradition to create modern day pottery.

Mel shows the string he uses to cut his clay. He tries to make all of his tools out of things he has around his shop.

The Pile

Sword practices an old kind of pottery technique – digging and processing his own clay, a practice of pottery that Appalachian’s ancestors did out of necessity for many years. It was a way to create plates, bowls and other ceramic tools. It is rare for a potter to dig their own clay today, but Sword still does it as a way of preserving an old technique.

While building his home, he created a large clay mound, made entirely of the dirt that surrounds his home. The pile is about 7 feet tall, 15 feet wide.

This is not any ordinary looking mound of clay one typically sees — it looks more like heavy dirt. Technically, it is clay soil right now, but it is the timely process of turning that soil into a moldable product that potters had to do before the industry was commercialized.

“Pottery is just something that is a necessary thing to have in your life.,” says Renee Margocee, a professional potter and executive director of the Tamarack Foundation for the Arts. She says in the early days in Appalachia, people had to source their own clay too, much like Sword. “And clay is something that can be found everywhere. And so you can literally use what is close at hand to create an object that is utilitarian.”

A Potter’s Love Story

Sword has been making pottery for much of his life, but he only started digging clay about 15 years ago. His reason, he says, was love. He took his then girlfriend, now wife, camping outside of Morgantown.

Mel’s “West Virginia Pearls.” He first made them for his wife on a camping trip at Cooper’s Rock.

“We were hiking through the rain, and I saw the clay and water coming off the hill. And I knew there was clay there so I just went over there a scooped a little up,” Sword recalls.

And he formed the clay into little round beads and left them in the campfire coals. And in the morning he said, “Here sweetie, here’s some West Virginia pearls.”

And that has become Sword’s side business in retirement. He is the person who can make you “West Virginia Pearls.”

The Process

Hand digging clay is labor intensive. In fact, Margocee says in her training to become a potter she learned how to process clay, in an effort to appreciate the medium.

“There will be a lot of organic matter in it, like twigs, rocks and burs,” Margocee says.

To break down the larger pieces of dry clay, Sword uses what looks like a very large mortar and pestle he hand made from a garage door spring, pipe and a few other things lying around. The contraption crushes chunky clay into fine sand.

Mel pours clay soil onto a window screen. He uses it to filter the soil into a five gallon bucket.

He then puts the pulverized chunks of clay through a screen, which filters out twigs and rocks as clay sand is poured into a bucket.

Sword says it takes him about four hours to fill one five-gallon bucket.

“I’m the kind of person who likes to do monotonous jobs, and this is very monotonous,” he says.

Later, he adds water until it created a thick, muddy substance using a drill attached to an old paint stirrer to mix the clay together.

Mel crushing the chunky, hard clay soil into a fine sand. He made this contraption out of things lying around his garage, including a garage door spring and some pipe.

After several days Sword removes any excess water that does not absorb using a turkey baster.

The clay then sits in a mold that absorbs any remaining moisture. And after that, Sword’s ready to work.

Turning The Clay Into Something

Sword uses the clay to make pots, bowls and mugs, shaped and molded with a foot pedal powered table — or a kick wheel. Although there are electric powered tables these days, that is not Sword’s style.

In his studio, the surface of the table spins around and around, much like a spool.

The hunk of red clay sits in the middle as Sword shapes it with his hands to make a mug.

He works year-round, and though he sells some of his work, he says it is not his objective. He says he just enjoys the process of it all.

Margocee suggests that every potter should try working with clay, like Sword, at least once. Although she admits that if one wants to sell pottery on a large scale, processing found clay is not the most efficient. However, it is still a part of our Appalachian history.

“There’s a romantic element to understanding it from beginning to end. And there’s extreme value in that,” Margocee says.

Sword hopes to invite students to his clay workshop, to show them his love for the process.

A mug Mel is making. He still uses a kick wheel, which is a traditional way to shape pottery.

And, if you want to try to find some West Virginia clay, Sword suggests keeping your eyes peeled after a rainstorm, especially on muddy backroads. Look for red spines in the banks of rivers and roads. Who knows, maybe you will even be able to try your hand at a West Virginia Pearl for someone you love.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

Marshall Ceramics Event Raises $17,000 for Food Pantry

Marshall University ceramics students have raised $17,000 for a food pantry.

The university says the 2016 Empty Bowls event raised enough money to allow the Facing Hunger Foodbank to provide 127,500 meals.

A check presentation was held Thursday at the university in Huntington.

Through the work of Marshall ceramics students and local potters, more than 1,000 bowls were sold April 15. For a $15 donation, patrons received a handcrafted ceramic bowl and a modest lunch meant to emulate a soup kitchen meal.

The Facing Hunger Foodbank serves more than 115,000 people in 17 counties in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and southern Ohio.