By Rachel King, Staff
This semester the University of Mary Hardin Baylor Clay Club has undergone a few changes. One of these being the introduction of their new president, Cameron Garcia, a junior here at UMHB who has been a member of the Clay Club for about a year and a half.
Garcia’s knowledge of clay and previous work in the club gave him an advantage when it came time to choose a new president.
“I spent hours upon hours here just learning about clay and the inner workings of the club itself.” Garcia explained. “I was secretary last year and when both the president and vice president graduated last year, I ended up just sort of assuming the position.”
While Garcia is excited to be president, the task can appear daunting at times.
“It’s definitely a lot of responsibility,” Garcia commented. “It’s going to be a lot of work to keep up with everything and make sure it’s all in order.”
Garcia isn’t planning on making any major changes to the club at this time, but he is always looking for ways to improve and make it a better experience for the members.
“I think that the way that it was before worked, but it wasn’t as organized as it is now.” Garcia said. “We’re definitely trying to make more of an effort to establish ourselves on campus and create a bigger and stronger community than we’ve had in the past. I’m excited to be able to teach people and give them all a place to be creative.”
Clay Club was started in the spring of 2020 before the pandemic began by several art students here at UMHB. Since then the club has flourished into an open and safe space for students to learn about ceramics and create art regardless of their fields of study. They meet on Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. in the Baugh Center for the Visual Arts. In years past the club has hosted a pottery sale on King Street once a semester. At this sale, club members and ceramics students sell their ceramic pieces to other members of the UMHB community.
It’s safe to say that the Clay Club has made quite a splash here on campus and Garcia was excited to see plenty of growth both in membership and morale this semester.
“We had so many sign ups at the Big Fair which gave me a lot of hope for the coming semester, but we were also kind of worried about how we would fit everybody in this one room.” Garcia remarked.. “We decided that we would just figure it out. Even if that meant going into the next room and us leaders spreading out to make sure everyone had someone there to help them. We just knew we would make it work.”
This semester is looking quite positive for the Clay Club so far and hopefully they will continue to improve and grow with the help of Garcia and the rest of his team.
