Since right after fall break, senior Reece Wilson had been working on a special advanced ceramics project.

“We were supposed to do a project that was a head,” Wilson said. “You would start on a peg and build up. I decided I would rather do a triceratops head.”

And from there, the project took off. Wilson spent six months on it. Since the project was so detailed, Wilson had help from seniors Ben Werner and Hannah Wehrle as well as from Ceramics teacher Nathan Fry in order to finish it before spring break.

“I will say that the project was very hard and included a lot of technical skills as well as detailed work and that Reece put tons of effort into making the project look how he wanted it to,” Wehrle said. “It was difficult to get the flail of the head to stand up with wet clay, the horns were all hand sculpted, and each scale was carved and smoothed several times. On top of that, Reece also spent days perfecting the paint to make sure everything looked just right. It was a lot more work than it looks like, and it looks like a lot of work.”

Wilson believes that since he worked so hard on this project, it deserves to be something that is shown off.

“The triceratops head is something I feel I am proud of because it was a project that I put many many hours into,” Wilson said. “There were a handful of times I thought to myself that I couldn’t do it or that I was not good enough to finish this project, at least not on my own. I’m proud I pushed myself, and overall, I feel pride in my awesome friends who were willing to sacrifice some of their time in order to help me finish my triceratops.”

With all of this effort, Wilson’s creation found success at the art show.

“The art show was a blast,” Wilson said. “A lot of people congratulated me on my triceratops, and overall it was just a lot of fun to see everyone elses works of art. My award was a ribbon for best and show and $50 from the man who judges the art show. As for my future plans for my triceratops, I have no clue as to how or where I am going to display it.”

Wilson recommends ceramics to anyone interested in choosing it as an elective.

“I think advanced ceramics or ceramics in general is really fun because you can do literally anything you can think of,” Wilson said. “Or if vases are your thing, you can make a repeat structure and design it in a thousand different ways. Or if you do sculpting, you can make anything you can imagine. There’s no limit at all.”