TheBurg

30 | theburgnews.com | 09.19 D uring a good portion of our interview at Little Amps, Amy LeFever was staring at the brick wall behind me in the Harrisburg coffee shop. "I love a lot of the textures in there, the patterns— how it's breaking down," she said. "at's as good as my piece in the State Museum. I would hang that." It's everyday sights like these that inspire LeFever and help launch her into her next project. e Middletown resident created hundreds of ceramic pieces full of unique textures and patterns. One of her latest works, rectangular white tile pieces covered in diagonal lines and divots, landed her first place this year in the ceramics category of the annual "Art of the State" competition. "It was a sense of affirmation of what you do," said LeFever, a HACC adjunct professor. "I came in and hung the piece myself. I was kind of nervous about it. It was something I shouldn't have been nervous about, but I was. I was thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong, but it went super smoothly." Before her piece was hung in the State Museum, before winning numerous awards, and before traveling across the country to study art, LeFever was a musician. She started playing classical piano when she was in the third grade, her favorite being Chopin. It was in high school when LeFever first started "messing around" with art. Her sister Letitia, who was an artist, would fish out clay from the creek behind their house and together they would create different creatures and objects from it. It wasn't until she started at HACC in 2004 that she really fell into the ceramics world. For her general studies major, she needed an art elective, so she took "Ceramics 1." "It sucked me right in," she said. "I just spent all my time in there, and then I just continued down that path." From then, she won first and second place in two student art exhibits at HACC and was a featured artist in the Radius Gallery in the State Museum. After earning her associate's degree, LeFever studied at Alfred University in New York and earned her bachelor's degree in fine arts. Her art then took her across the world to study at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute in China. For a month, LeFever went sightseeing in various cities, such as Shanghai, and learned different clay techniques. "[My favorite part] was seeing ceramics in a new way, a new place, and working with new material," she said. textuReD liFe Ceramist Amy LeFever sees patterns all around us. bY YAAsmeen PIPer Ceramics by Amy LeFever

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