In the summer of 2002 I had the opportunity to travel to Ghana on scholarship. I was there for one month with 16 other interdisciplinary students. Each of us was there to study in their field; mine was pottery. I learned the significance of pottery in Ghanaian culture. It is socially specific, that is, made by individuals of a certain class of people, and is also modernized in some areas, making it comparable to the ceramics we practice here in the U.S.. The most intriguing part of my studies involved how pottery was used in religious ceremonies.
In addition to going to Ghana in 2002, I spent two months in Ethiopia in 2007. I visited a local craft school called the Felasha Village outside of Gondar. There I worked with the local clay (which is naturally jet black), and volunteered in the studio for one week. The program made and sold pottery in order to support its community service project: to educate women from the countryside on how to make pots, giving them a trade that they could use in order to support their families.
