MC’s Art Education students host annual ornament sale

By Cara Pridemore

For more than fifteen years, Mississippi College’s art education students have held an annual ornament sale. This year’s sale will take place in the MC cafeteria during lunchtime and dinnertime from November 17 to November 20. The students handmake, design and sell clay ornaments, as well as their individually-designed prints.

“Because we’ve done it for so long, there’s so many ornaments out there,” Elise Payne, MC’s art education coordinator and director of the sale, said. “It’s like a Clinton tradition.” Single color ornaments are $7, multicolor ornaments are $10 and prints are $15.

While an undergraduate MC student in 2010, Payne herself designed and sold ornaments.

“It started then for the same reason we’re doing it now: to help fundraise for our junior and senior art education majors to go to the National Art Education Association Convention,” she said. The proceeds will cover students’ flights, hotel expenses and registration fees, with this year’s convention being in Chicago.

The sale also helps students hone their organizational and communication skills. While Payne is the director, she takes a passive role, allowing students to run the sales.

“What I enjoy the most is getting to see my students take ownership of it and work together,” she said. “Everything is a collaboration.”

Students from all classifications work together to create and design the ornaments, which is a detailed process beginning in August and September. The art students begin by rolling out slabs of ceramic clay. Then, using Payne’s designed stencils, they trace shapes from the clay with a needle tool, adding texture, imprinted designs, and the hole for the string. After the edges are smoothed, ceramics students place the ornaments in a 2,000-degree fire in a kiln. This process is called “bisque firing,” which allows the clay to turn to stone.

“After they fire it, they’ll bring it back, and we will glaze them,” Lillian Baker, a junior art education major, said.

Glazing entails painting a coat onto the ornaments for a decorative finish. Many students glaze the ornaments with multiple colors, creating artsy tie-dye effects and patterns. To ensure that the ornaments don’t stick to the kiln, Payne wipes the glaze off the back of each ornament before bisque firing them again. This final bisque fire allows the glaze to fuse to the ornaments, creating a glasslike finish.

“I always love to see their creativity with the designs,” Payne said. “When they come out of the kiln with that last glaze fire, it’s like Christmas morning when we open it and say, ‘Look how these turned out!’” The ornaments are then strung with twine and ready for sale.

This year, shapes range from typical crosses, doves and angels to the locally-focused state of Mississippi, MC letters and Clinton arrowheads to festive Christmas balls and teardrop ornaments.

“I have been really happy with the way they’ve been doing the little Christmas ornaments, because my students decorate them all,” Payne said. “They just have a blank template.”

Creating the prints has also been a tedious process, beginning in August. Students must carve a design onto a linoleum block, essentially creating a stamp that can be put on paper.

“You start with your key block, which is all black,” Amber Baugh, a junior art education major, said. “You print it onto this in order to get the outline of it, and you carve everything away that you don’t want to print.”

Imagining the concept, printing it on the template, and then physically shaving away the block requires time and skill.

“As art ed students, I don’t think about the ‘sell-ability’ of my work, so it’s a different mindset making all my stuff,” Catherine Dean, a senior art education major, said. The art students have made approximately 100 prints and 200 ornaments for the sale.

Payne hopes the community will support future art educators, while also bringing a piece of MC home.

“I know a lot of people in the community have probably received an MC ornament as a gift,” she said. “So, I hope they come out and get to take with them an original piece of artwork that a student made.”