It’s 10 p.m. on a Thursday night. Many students are hunkered over their textbooks or hitting the bars, but Harley Weigle is in the art building arched over a pottery wheel shaping and reshaping clay as he visualizes the form of his next creation.

Weigle, a junior, is a practicing ceramicist studying art and business at Shippensburg University, but his interest in the field goes all the way back to high school. In his freshman year of high school, he was randomly assigned a ceramics class.

“I guess you could say that I didn’t choose art... art chose me,” Weigle joked.

Weigle gained a foundation of knowledge through his high school ceramics classes, but it was not until college that he began to engage in the intricacies of the pottery-making process.

The process is time-consuming and requires patience. Weigle starts each project by turning raw materials into clay wedges that are eventually cut into pieces ranging from 1 to 16 pounds. With the readied clay, Weigle throws it on the pottery wheel, and using a variety of techniques, he molds the material into the shape of his next work: pot, mug, vase, plate — Weigle has tried them all.

Once the item is formed from the wheel, it is dried, glazed and then put into an electric kiln that heats the item at 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of two days.

“I had a girl ask me once if I slept there. I told her I had a pull-out couch behind my desk,” Weigle joked.

It is not unusual for Weigle to put 25 to 30 hours into his work a week. This dedication has helped him make tremendous growth in his craft.

“Every year, I think I’m doing something really spectacular, but then I look back, and it was actually awful… the pieces are super thick. It’s bad,” Weigle said.

But Weigle is extremely proud of the work he is doing now, and recent events have given him the opportunity to show off his skills.

From Sept. 28 to Oct. 15, Weigle’s work will be displayed at the Brindle Gallery in the Huber Art Center.

“I enjoy knowing that after I’m dead and gone, there will still be pieces of my stuff around with my signatures and my thumbprints. I love the longevity of it all. To see more of Harley’s creations, visit his Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/WeigleCeramics.

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