Pete Lawton

Pete Lawton looks at home in the ceramics studio, surrounded by unfinished vessels and odd-looking tools. Although he is currently working on a project for class, one gets the feeling that he could be found here in his free time as well.

Pete is an art studio major with a concentration in photography. He now sits in the ceramics studio, putting handles on some pottery that he “threw” earlier.

The clay he currently manipulates is about three times the size of a normal coffee mug. It will be used for ice cream, Lawton says.

Pete says his favorite medium is whatever he’s currently doing. At the moment, that’s ceramics.

“Ever since I was a kid I’ve always been drawing and coloring. I guess a lot of kids do, but I stuck with it. I was never good at math or science, so this was the obvious choice, I guess,” Pete says. ” My senior year of high school I took a drawing class. When I started looking at schools, I had to ask myself what I wanted to do. After thinking about it a lot, I figured this is what I wanted to do.”

His photography concentration comes, in part, from the desire not to become the clich? starving artist. While Lawton loves photography, there was a certain element of practicality that led to this choice.

“To be honest, (photography) seemed like it would be one of the only things in art that I would be able to get a job doing,” Lawton says. “Before I started getting into anything, I thought I’d look into career options.”

Sitting at a table that will never be free from a dulling haze of clay residue, Pete works on what is known as a pulled handle. Clay is attached to the side of the mug and pulled out and down, then reattached to form a loop. He gets up periodically to look at his work from across the room.

“Does that come out too far? I think it does,” he says, as he removes clay from the handle with surgical precision.

” I’m generally carefree. I’m carefree but I’m also a perfectionist, if that’s possible,” Pete says, smoothing the joint of mug and handle with a wet brush.

He’ll go back and remove the course brush marks with a finer brush, he says.

As Pete works, he talks about art’s appeal and what motivates him to create.

“It’s just, like, a desire to create things, to make stuff; pictures, objects — I’m a very visual person,” Pete said.

Pete says that his art reflects his own life.

“Since I’m so young, I sometimes feel like I don’t have a lot of life experience to take a stance on anything in particular. A lot of artists have this issue like race, religion, or politics or things like that, but there’s nothing that I feel extremely strongly about right now,” he says. “Since I don’t have a certain issue I deal with things that have to do with my own life and my own personal issues-fears, insecurities, things like that,” Lawton says.

The piece that Pete is working on is part of an eight piece class assignment. Each piece takes approximately two hours to make. The majority of that time, at least on this piece, has been spent working on the handle. Attention to detail like this hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“Pete is a good student- he’s a natural learner. He has taken to ceramics very quickly, excelling at both hand building and wheel throwing. He seems to be able to excel at anything he applies himself to,” Art Professor Adam Davis said.

Holly Nussbaum Williams, a senior art major and Lawton’s classmate, also recognizes his talent.

“He’s a fantastic drawer. I thought (his sketches) were photographs photocopied from a magazine,” she said.

Nussbaum Williams has done ceramics for several years and says that Pete has made rapid progress.

“He’s a pretty good pot thrower, too. It’s only his second semester and he can sit there and do that,” she says as she gestures in Pete’s direction.” If you can draw as well as he can, you can pick up on anything- two dimensional or three dimensional,” Nussbaum Williams said.

Drawing has already proven profitable for Lawton, who’s been commissioned to draw portraits. Pete says he’s only sold portraits that he’s been commissioned to do, not his personal artwork. He usually charges 10 dollars for each hour of work and projects take around 10 hours to complete.

“It’s hard to tell how long you’re gonna spend on it,” Lawton says.

Pete has other aspirations in addition to art. He’d like to try his hand at entrepreneurship.

” I’ve always wondered if I would be able to start a successful business,” Lawton said. “I always have my eye out for ideas.”

One of those ideas is a pizza parlor with unusual hours.

“We were at Huddle House one night and all the bars closed,” Pete said. “People came piling in. It was dead before, (but) business was booming when the bars closed. I thought ‘hey, that’s a good idea’.”

Pete gets up again to look at his work form a distance. Apparently a change in perspective is sometimes necessary. Returning to the table, he shaves off some clay with a special tool.

“I just don’t know,” he mutters to himself.

Much like the mug he works on, Pete’s college career is nearing completion. He has enjoyed his tenure at GC&SU, saying that his most memorable moments were his freshman year.

Pete has some advice for other students– advice that has no doubt helped him in his artistic endeavors.

“Be true to yourself,” he said.

A smirk crossed his face as he quoted another GCSU proverb that only avid T-shirt readers and those who managed to stay awake during freshmen orientation will recognize:

“Yes means yes, no means no, and everything else means no.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Mar 3 2006. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry