Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Winkler.
Hi Jennifer, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Art has always been a passion for me, and I am very fortunate to have parents and a grandfather who encouraged me in that pursuit. The idea of being a teacher was maybe not quite as pronounced in my childhood dreams, but I think it was always there somewhere in my mind. I have lesson plans (though I didn’t know that’s what they were at the time) that I wrote in 3rd grade when I invited friends over to play “school,” and we took the cushions off the couch to use as pretend desks. The lesson was how to make castles out of Styrofoam packing materials.
I took various art classes in high school and went to college at Ashland University, receiving dual degrees in Art Education and Fine Arts. My primary studio concentration was in metal sculpture, specifically steel fabrication and lost-wax casting, and my secondary concentration was in painting. I minored in Spanish and Art History with the idea that it would help my teaching career.
When I graduated, art teacher jobs were much more scarce than they are now, so I took a job working for Carousel Works in Mansfield, Ohio, painting murals and figures for various carousels over the world, including the Cleveland Zoo, Bronx Zoo, and Busan, South Korea. At that time, I was also teaching night school Spanish in Medina and somewhere in there I was working as a weekend photographer for the local newspaper in Wooster. With my multiple jobs, I had the joy of practicing my art in the form of painting, photography, and occasional metalwork, but the goal of finding an art teaching job was still a constant dream that gnawed at me daily. Every day, during every lunch break, I would check the job openings at all the area schools and come up with lesson plan ideas. I’m sure my carousel coworkers were annoyed with me asking them questions at the break table like, “If you were in 7th grade and I gave you this project with these materials, would you think this was fun?”
When the job I have now at Smithville High School became available in 2014, there was still fierce competition in the job market. With dozens of other people vying for this one art teacher position, I didn’t honestly think I would get the job. Oddly enough, I was told it was my job at the carousel factory and the corresponding portfolio of work that set me apart.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think the biggest challenge in my career has also been one of the most exciting and fun aspects of it: expanding my program and learning new skills as we acquire each new piece of equipment. When we received our laser engraver and our first 3D printer in 2018, I had no previous experience or background with such machines. Now, almost six years later, we have expanded our 3D printing capabilities by becoming one of the first public school classrooms in the state of Ohio to have a ceramic 3D printer, and the laser has become the backbone of our program by catalytically helping us fund the purchase of many other machines and tools. The idea that we have a professional, surface-mixing glass torch, three kilns, a glassblowing furnace, 8 potters wheels, and gem-faceting equipment in a small, public school classroom is just mind-blowing and I wish I could tell my younger self who got hired for this job back in 2014, what this classroom and program would like in 2024!
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
I still work primarily in metal fabrication and painting, but for the last four years or so, my focus has been glass, specifically flameworking with soft glass and borosilicate glass, and glassblowing. I’ve had the privilege of taking flameworking and glassblowing classes in some really interesting places in the U.S. from Las Vegas, to Portland, to Salem, New Jersey and learned from some phenomenal glass artists that have now become my friends.
I find that there is a lot overlap between my artistic pursuits and my role as a teacher and I try to incorporate as much of my work as an artist as I can in the classroom. Whenever I have work in a show or get a new commission, I tell my students about it, about the process of getting the show or commission, and I show them photos of my work, or I bring in the work itself.
As a teacher, I enjoy the look on my student’s faces when they finally master a technique they’ve been working on or the moment when they find out they’ve won an award for their artwork, but I think my proudest moment so far was the day I received the letter informing me we had gotten the grants that I applied for to get a glassblowing furnace for my classroom. I had kept most of the application process a secret from my students, so being able to hand the letter to the same students who had dreamed of getting a glassblowing furnace for the school and watching the surprise and sheer joy on their faces as they realized their dreams were happening and we were actually going to be able to do glassblowing at our school. That was an unforgettable moment.
As an artist, my proudest moment was being commissioned to make three large-scale kinetic sculptures for Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens. I think that really was a turning point for me in my artistic career and my confidence in myself to work at that large of a scale and with that quick of a timeframe.
I try to treat my high school classes like college courses. I do my best to give my students as much creative freedom as possible by keeping my assigned projects pretty open-ended and I strive to introduce my students to the real machines and materials very early on.
As a child, I always wanted to bypass the “kid versions” of materials and get to the real materials as fast as possible– ‘forget the play dough and crayons, show me the pottery clay and the Prismacolors.’
That mindset, when applied to my classroom, is students using professional stoneware clay in high school, professional glassworking torches and tools, programming kilns, and having the training to go with it. I have 6th-grade students who are able to run the laser engraver completely independently and even create their own design files and use calipers to make their design measurements correspond to the thicknesses of materials. I have high school students who can explain the different types of glass we use with the torch based on their coefficient of expansion and how that changes the way the glass acts in the flame.
I cannot convey the level of joy it brings me that I have students as young as 8th grade asking me to teach them how to program and repair kilns because they hope to start their own pottery business in the future and want to understand the nuances of firing temperatures and ramp/hold cycles. That’s just an unreal level of cool for me.
Another difference is that I try to give my students a voice in a lot of the classroom decisions. I have a special section of the whiteboard in the classroom where students can write down anything they wish we had in the art room, no matter how big or small, and we plan out ways to get those items. Whenever I get ready to purchase new materials for the art room or restock materials, I consult the students on what they need that semester, whether it’s pottery glazes they’ve been eyeing or specific borosilicate glass colors they’ve seen an artist using and want to try for themselves.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I didn’t realize this was surprising until I spoke about it with other teachers, but there have been quite a few times over the years when parents of my students have reached out to me for help picking out the student’s Christmas or birthday presents after the student discovers a new interest in pottery or another art medium. Often, it has involved contacting area artists and universities to find second-hand or even discarded potters’ wheels, kilns, and other art tools. I personally think it’s such a unique privilege to get to be a part of that, (whether the student knows about my role in it or not), and so much fun to hear all about it afterward when the students come back from break.
Contact Info:
- Website: ideallyinez.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennifer.winkler.art?igsh=eXd6N20wNnpsdGwy&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.winkler.773?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Image Credits
Olivia Wilford Photography
