MARQUETTE – An art education major typically focuses on two major things: the art itself, and educating people about that art.

Amanda Kucharek, a senior at Northern Michigan University, is majoring in art education with a concentration in ceramics. She balances her efforts between her unique ceramics and teaching kids at Negaunee Middle School how to be creative with art.

They don’t have to produce the professional ceramic pieces that come from her hands, but that’s not necessarily the goal with the preteen set.

Kucharek, an Alpena native, is a student teacher at the middle school for students in fifth through eighth grades – an age, she acknowledged, that’s still receptive to their inner, creative, even magical side.

“It’s been a really good experience,” Kucharek said. “I’ve enjoyed it a lot.”

She teaches at the middle school every day, with various grades working on specific projects. For example, the fifth grade used clay to make miniature turtles, and now are working on a project based on fauvism, an art movement that emphasizes color.

“We’re just doing pictures that involve a lot of different colors and kind of outlining and outlining over and over again,” Kucharek said. “The sixth-graders are still working on something that’s kind of cross-curricular. In their other class, they were learning about the Aztecs, and so they’re working on making Aztec suns. So, they’re working with symmetry.”

The seventh- and eighth-graders might return to working with clay, she said.

“One of the things we did before, we made little desserts out of clay,” said Kucharek, who keeps on her table in her Marquette apartment realistic pieces of blueberry pie and cake that she herself created.

The fifth-graders made “pinch pots,” which began with balls of clay. The young artists then used their thumbs to pinch them and make them round.

“Then they have to learn how to attach things well,” Kucharek said, “and make sure they don’t fall off. After we bisque-fire them, still-firing them once, then they get to glaze them. So that’s very exciting for the fifth-graders, so that they get to play with colors, and the glaze isn’t the color it’s going to be at the end, so they have to do some forward thinking.”

Negaunee Middle School art teacher Pam Jacobsonsaid Kucharek is good with the kids.

“She has super, really cool ideas,” she said. “Really fresh ideas.”

Jacobson said the kids particularly are enthused with the fauvism project.

“They’re really into it right now,” Jacobson said.

Kucharek, who transferred from Alpena Community College, is graduating from NMU this spring, and hopes to stay in the area as an art teacher.

Anything with art, in fact, is fine with her. But that shouldn’t be surprising, considering that her affection for art came at a young age.

“I just always enjoy doing little arts and crafts-type things,” Kucharek said. “When I was really little, my mom had made me kind of a craft box that was just full of things. I could do whatever I wanted, and so I did that in my spare time a lot.”

She didn’t take as many art classes in high school as others did, but at ACC, she took a sculpture class. She then began to think about being an art teacher, and took as many art classes as she could, including a subject that would be her collegiate emphasis: ceramics.

Why does ceramics appeal to her more than other types of art?

“I think it’s the way I can make details happen,” Kucharek said. “I started out doing some more, like, two-dimensional design, and it just wasn’t what I needed to be working with.”

It’s about the 3-D quality, of being able to build something.

“It’s something about that,” Kucharek said, “like being able to hold something in my hands as compared to, like, envisioning it and putting it down.”

Some of Kucharek’s art was displayed in March at the Marquette Arts and Culture Center, specifically the show called “EMERGE: Highlights for the Arts at Northern.” In that show, NMU students were invited to show their art.

She showed a matching set of three curio boxes containing colorful ceramic pieces that resemble – not duplicate – undersea creatures.

“I started thinking about insect collections,” Kucharek said. “I was kind of inspired by that. At the same time, I was inspired by all the color you find undersea, and I was thinking about the way people – humans – are so drawn to collect things that they think are pretty. So, like with insect collections, they take something that’s out living and stick it in a box.”

She didn’t want her pieces to look like something from real life, however, so her inspiration came from sea slugs, anemones and barnacles and the like.

It’s that “barnacle-inspired” art that draws people to those pieces.

“It’s things that look real, like could exist in nature, but they don’t exist other than what I’ve made myself, so that was kind of fun,” Kucharek said.

Kucharek originally liked the more non-functional, avant-garde art, making a “big ridiculous teapot that you would never use.” However, she’s considering venturing into ceramic jewelry, which definitely is functional.

As far passing on her art skills to youngsters, Kucharek said she’s always been patient, and that’s a quality that works with middle schoolers to help them channel their skills.

“I really have enjoyed that particular age group,” Kucharek said.

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250.