by Hil-Dee Fisher

 

 

 

I began my journey in Preston, Idaho, the daughter of dairy farmers.  Although, I moved from Idaho when I was eight, it left an impression that is part of who I am today.  My seven brothers and sisters worked hard at daily farm chores.  However, it was the many hours spent creating my own worlds in the fields, barns, and down by the snake river that I remember.  This beginning helped me to find beauty in the simple things that surround our everyday lives.

 

 

During high school I discovered my love for Art.  I spent much of my time drawing in journals, recording things that I found interesting.  After graduating, I entered college and began courses to become an architect.  I quickly realized I couldn't shake my love of art and changed my degree to Art with a ceramic emphasis.  I played with many mediums until I found myself down in the basement of the college in the Mud room. Clay quickly became my favorite way of creating and finding peace.  I spent a year at the University of New Mexico trying to absorb as much from the Native clay community as I possibly could.

 

 

After college, I married and started my family of three.  I worked for a few years at a home improvement store designing kitchens.  Trying to juggle the schedules of job and family I found myself drawn to teaching. I spent a few years teaching third grade and finally an art position opened up.  Although, it was when I began teaching art to little children that they opened up the part of me that I had closed up years earlier.  I was flooded with creative urges that I couldn't contain any longer.

 

 

I began a ceramics program at the school where I teach, and hosting art shows for the students' work.  Their enthusiasm fed my own enthusiasm to create.  My students keep my artistic spirit alive.  I am always working in whatever medium I am teaching them.  I never knew I could paint with water color until I did a unit on Georgia O' Keeffe.  When I taught charcoal drawing I did portraits of my own children.  Their fresh ideas always spark my own creative interests.  I see something in their work that finds its way into my own.  I learn as much from them as they do from me.

 

 

Recently, I have been focusing more on my own work.  My husband built me a great studio in my back yard, and I have spent my summer working away. I showed my work for the first time to the public at the Hernando County Art Festival in May 2006.  I had a great time and met some wonderful artists and crafters.  My work won a merit award, which helped me become more secure in what other think of what is precious to me.

 

 

Even though I dabble in many mediums, clay is my main love.  The cycle of taking a lump of clay that smells of earth, shaping it, firing it and ultimately completing a process that ends in somebody handling that same lump of clay in its transfigured state. This final step is why my work is mainly functional.  The process doesn't seem complete until someone is using the object that was created.  I always try to incorporate something different and beautiful, something that changes the object from an everyday useful object into art.  I think everyone should learn to appreciate the bowl, cup, or plate they are using and find beauty in this world of fast paced living.  I hope that something I have made can, even if momentarily, help another appreciate the daily act they are performing.

 

 

 

About The Author:

Hil-Dee Fisher is a grade school teacher in Florida who has extensive experience working with the pottery wheel and kiln.  Not long after she enrolled at the University of New Mexico's art program, Fisher began making frequent visits to nearby Navajo and Pueblo reservations to learn the tribes' traditional pottery techniques.  She has a web site called Dancing With Clay where she displays both her own art as well as that of her students.