The Teacher-Student Connection: Standing on each other's shoulders

Carol Douglas ~ Petal Doll

Teaching is source of creative influx for sculptor and jewelry maker, Carol Douglas. She began her career as a teacher and has since moved into sculpting for herself and others. Now, after many years creating on her own, she has returned full circle to teach metal clay and polymer clay workshops to students of all expertise—from the amateur to the professional.

 The rewards of passing on knowledge come back tenfold, Carol says.  In addition, sometimes a student takes a lesson and does something so creative as a result, that she finds herself inspired to go further next time. 

“It’s a synergy,” Carol said.  “I start on your shoulders, then you can start on my shoulders, and it goes on and creates a pyramid where we keep going up.  If you don’t share, then everyone stays on the ground level digging in the dirt.”

Carol Douglas ~ Butterflies

When Carol was teaching, she soon became resentful that she wasn’t sculpting for herself.  “I thought, if I don’t do it for myself I never will,” Carol said. “I hadn’t developed my own style, but I had been learning the notes during that time [as a teacher], learning how to troubleshoot, and in showing others to do stuff I learned how to do stuff by myself.”

By that time she had done a lot of the technical legwork needed to have a firm basis for her own creations and, as such, thrived when left to her own creative devices, winning a number of awards and having her work highlighted in a number of prominent publications, the least of which being “The Mind Key Project: An Anthology.”  Even today, however, she often finds her students creating something she may have never dreamed of doing.

Carol Douglas ~ Dragon Creature

“It’s not to be jealous that you’ve made something better than I’ve made,” Carol advises. “But [as a teacher] to say: how can I make something better… and then you can learn from that and make something better too. It makes me step up to the plate and keep reinventing the wheel.”

Copper pendant, by Danielle

I had the blessing to take one of Carol’s intensive workshops, and tried my hand at sculpting with a tricky medium—metal clay—for the first time.  Carol taught the basics, and from there I found myself manifesting an idea that she said was certainly not a beginner’s project.  I had struggles along the way, and during each step, Carol came in to help me fix my mistakes, and troubleshoot the issue.  When my piece came out of the kiln cracked down the middle, there was no stress, we simply went about fixing and re-firing it.

Danielle's Eagle Face

When we worked on polymer dolls, I took her idea of creating a bird-man and morphed it into an eagle from a creative meditation we’d done earlier that week.  I followed her instructions, then went off on my own, and was amazed and thrilled by the result.  Notice the photograph, and be aware that I had never sculpted anything more extravagant than a sinewy dragon necklace in polymer, and had certainly never—ever—thought I could do something as intricate and alive as a face. My creativity might be all my own, but I attribute my success wholly to Carol’s adept and sincere instruction and desire to see her students thrive.

Although Carol was almost fifty when she finally went out on her own (ie: not as a teacher), she says the benefit to starting later in life was that she was wiser for it, recognizing that she wanted to do what she wanted to do, rather than create things for others or in order to make money.  It was a poignant reminder of why she went into teaching in the first place—to give students the room to make their own creations from no one’s imagination but their own.

“I still wanted to play and experiment,” Carol said.  “But it’s important to me to do something that is important to me.”

Carol Douglas ~ Dragon Beaded Necklace

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