By Catharine Wilkins

Jess Cullen, our new Upper School Ceramics teacher, loves ceramics because “you don’t know what you’re going to get at the end of the day… You just enjoy the process, and the product, if it turns out well, is kind of icing on the cake.” And now, as we welcome her to Collegiate this year, she shares this mindset with all of her students.

Cullen grew up in Woodbridge, Virginia, and attended Woodbridge High School. She moved to Charlottesville to study at the University of Virginia, where she majored in architecture; however, she switched her major shortly after her first year to anthropology, focusing on environmental sciences.

After college, Cullen moved to the Pacific Northwest, where she worked at an environmental nonprofit on college campuses for environmental outreach programs in Portland, Oregon before moving to Seattle, Washington. Cullen worked at what would eventually become known as Getty Images, where she was a researcher. People would call her from all over the country, and it was her job to know all of the photographic stock houses that they managed. Cullen said that “it was the beginning of digital photography.”

After six years, Cullen moved back to Richmond for graduate school at Virginia Commonwealth University, and then worked at Woodville Elementary in Richmond and Harvie Elementary in Henrico, teaching 2nd grade, 3rd grade, and math.

In 2000, Cullen took her first ceramics class and immediately fell in love with it. She says, “that was it, like open up the rabbit hole, and I went down it.” However, it wasn’t until she stopped elementary school teaching to raise her daughter that she fully embarked on her art career.

Currently, Cullen’s pottery can be found at the gift shop of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Sho Bottom Clay, and Shopmade in Virginia. Cullen also does commissioned work. Additionally, she does art shows, with her most recent one being at the Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, D.C. Her work was also recently shown in the Hershey Center’s Gallery, along with pieces from other art teachers at Collegiate.

Much of Cullen’s work features grey or neutral clay with pops of color. Cullen says she first discovered this style of art when she commissioned a piece for one of her friends. As the two of them were discussing what they wanted the piece to look like, they decided the pieces should be “warm and accessible, but also have pops of color… I just started playing with the insides of the dishes being functional and having something on the outside that … couldn’t exist on the inside.” She has been exploring this style ever since. Cullen has taught at local pottery studios for 11 years, including Rosewood Pottery, The Visual Arts Center, Hand/Thrown Ceramics, as well as in her own studio. 

Cullen enjoys creating both commissioned work and recreational work for their own reasons. When she makes commissioned work, she is “very structured in my process, from giving a client expectations to finding out some of the things that they want and trying to merge that.” But when she is making art for herself, she has tons of freedom and “can be a little more experimental.”

Cullen is excited to return not only to teaching, but to teaching a craft that she has been working on for years. She hopes to “create a professional-style studio in an educational environment and also an opportunity to have the students here experience this.” Something that Cullen loves so much about the ceramics classroom is how it is a stress-free zone. She wants “kids to come into this room, and they’re not stressed; they are not worried about a test. They can come in, learn, and exist in a place that’s safe to fail.”

I have been working with Cullen this semester in Ceramics I, and so far the class has been the stress-free time that she was hoping for. We are learning all about clay itself, as well as techniques on how to properly shape it. Currently, we are making monsters out of clay. We had to sketch what we wanted the monster to look like, label what part of the monster is its superpower, and explain why we chose to make it. This project has been a perfect outlet for our creativity, since we are making something that pushes us to think outside of the box. This project has also given us the ability to practice our skills and get used to the clay.

Cullen hopes to eventually be able to have more time creating her own work to show students how she makes her pieces, and to show them what pursuing a career in ceramics could look like. 

So far, Cullen has created a studio environment where we can bounce ideas off one another, give each other constructive feedback with no fear of judgment, and find ways for us to express ourselves creatively in a new medium.

All photos courtesy of Jess Cullen.