From a Child’s Mud Pie Springs Creativity and--Gad--Even Discipline

Is there redeeming value in mud pies?

Carolyn Avera, for one, believes it’s a terrific beginning of a lifelong adventure into art.

“When children make mud pies, they get their first introduction into art without really knowing it,” the Fullerton woman said. “But as adults, the mud pies have a different name: They’re called ceramics.”

Making ceramics is an art, she said, and it can become an essential part of living that’s “not something separate or reserved for special people.”

With that philosophy, Avera has embarked on a series of ceramic classes for children 7-12 years old in schools and recreation centers, including one under way at La Palma Community Center. An award-winning ceramist, painter and teacher who has a fine-arts degree from the University of Georgia and the Southern drawl to go with it, Avera said children find that working with clay “is natural,” nothing more than an extension of making mud pies.

Other art media, Avera said, are often too difficult for young people just beginning.

With ceramics, however, children not only learn to make things, they “learn about clay . . . (and about) using (it) to express his or her own ideas in an art medium,” she said.

‘Evoke a Response to Life’

Avera’s philosophy is that “each work of art should evoke a response to life . . . in the art elements of composition, execution and presentation.”

While that seems aimed for more mature children, she said that small “children are very adaptive, and I enjoy working them, because once I get them interested, I know it will be something they will keep forever.”

She should know. Avera has raised six children of her own.

There is something about the feel of clay, the idea of making something from the earth itself that spurs the imagination of children, she said. Unfortunately, she said, it is an experience that children seldom get in school.

“Schools have cut out much of the arts that once were part of the regular curriculum,” she said.

But such programs are invaluable, she said, because children regularly exposed to the arts can use what they learn in other areas. “There is discipline in ceramics to do it a certain way, and that carries over into other structures,” she said.

Avera also believes it makes little difference what the inquiring youngster actually makes of clay.

“Even if you have to wonder what children are making, just ask them,” she said. “They know what it is.”

It takes adjustments in family life when one of them becomes handicapped, such as Steve Helm, 22, of Orange, who lost his sight because of diabetic retinopathy.

“We have asked his relatives and friends to attend a blindness awareness seminar next week,” said Mara Jean Davis, counselor at the Braille Institute of Orange County, “to show them how Steve will adjust to his blindness through active techniques and how he will deal with some of his independent living skills.”

Does he have their support? Davis said 55 relatives and friends have made reservations for the seminar.

As part of Hoover Elementary School’s emphasis on reading and writing that included an “Authormania” program, students in grades 3-5 heard author Amy Hagstrom talk about her book, “Strong and Free.”

She presented a slide program and showed the sponge-painting technique she used to illustrate her book.

Amy, who attends public school in Northern California, is 10 years old.

Last year, a Carl’s Jr. restaurant was host for hundreds of blind people attending the American Council of the Blind national convention near International Airport in Westchester.

How were they going to read the menu?

“They asked us to provide Braille menus,” said Shirley Bracken, speaking for the Anaheim-based firm. “They were so well received, we now have Braille menus in all our restaurants.”

The three-page, double-sided menu lists more than 50 items and describes its ingredients.

But because of different prices in various areas, it doesn’t list prices.

“They have to ask,” Bracken said.

Acknowledgments--Juliann C. Johnson of Newport Beach has been named West Coast “Breck Girl” and is competing with women from the East, South and Midwest to reign as Breck’s “Woman of the ‘80s.” A graduate of USC, she is a stockbroker in Orange.