We recently connected with Jordan Tracy and have shared our conversation below.

Jordan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

For many years I believed my future to be in academia, teaching literature courses at a 4-year university. This belief took me through a B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D. in Literature. When I arrived on the other side of my graduate work, the university classroom didn’t feel like the right place for me anymore. To work through this dramatic shift in my life I turned to clay–a medium I hadn’t worked with since high school. Ceramics completely transformed me into an artist who is patient and compassionate with myself and the world around me.

In the spring of 2019, I discovered my children’s school in Long Beach had two functional ceramic kilns sitting unused in a shed on campus. No one on staff knew how to operate them. I knew this discovery was my opportunity to share the power of clay with the school community, which had very little funding for art education at the time. I proposed restarting the school’s dormant ceramics program with me as the primary organizer, educator, and kiln technician. The administration was enthusiastic, and by the following fall, I had the program up and running. The overwhelmingly positive response from students, teachers, and families over the last 4 years is a testament to how clay can transform a community by empowering its children.

That program has now become Clay Day LBC, whose mission is to provide underserved TK-8th grade students across the city of Long Beach with free and equitable access to high-quality ceramic art education. My success over the last 4 years in creating a community of students and families who see ceramics as an integral part of elementary education continues to propel me forward. It’s undeniable that clay leaves an indelible mark on children. It empowers them with the lasting knowledge that they have unlimited creative potential, and that knowledge has the power to transform the educational landscape in a city I dearly love and call home.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Clay Day LBC is in its early stages of expansion, which means that I am the director as well as the only teacher on staff. I am enormously proud to share that in just 4 1/2 short years Clay Day LBC has:

-Helped TK-8 grade students create over 4,000 individual ceramic artworks
-Delivered 153 ceramic lessons in TK-8 classrooms during school hours
-Worked with 46 teachers in Long Beach
-Developed 28 ceramic art projects adaptable to TK-8 grade curriculum
-Retained 100% of teacher clients with 100% positive teacher feedback
-Produced 10 virtual lessons for use by K-8 teachers via Zoom during distance learning in 2020-2021
-Delivered over 1,000 “Clay-at-Home” clay kits during distance learning in 2020-2021
-Designed, facilitated, and installed 3 collaborative ceramic mosaic murals, which in total contain over 1,100 student-made tiles

These core in-school services have always been and will continue to be free because children deserve all the amazing benefits of ceramic art regardless of its cost.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The opportunity to share the medium of clay with children makes me feel a joy in my professional life that I didn’t know was possible. As the founder and lead teacher of Clay Day LBC, I have created a space to guide children through the really vulnerable and sometimes scary process of artistic creation using a medium that I love deeply. That’s a profoundly sacred role I take very seriously no matter the project we are making together.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

We’re all creative beings with so much potential to make the world over in beautiful and significant ways. Sometimes that curious, bright, and shining part of ourselves gets dulled over time by fear. At some point during my childhood, I learned that if I wasn’t the best at something immediately, it wasn’t worth pursuing. So I pursued only the things in which I truly excelled. This affected my creative life enormously because art requires so much practice and failure. I don’t think I recognized the impact that lesson had on my identity until I began to work with elementary school students who were actively struggling with crippling fear during our ceramic lessons. I can see a younger version of myself in the students who obsessively ask, “Is this right?” or “Is this good?”, the students who are paralyzed before they’ve even given themselves the chance to pick up their lump of clay, the students who want someone else to make the project for them, the students who cry shameful tears when their pinch pot isn’t “perfect.” My empathy for them turned out to also be compassion for myself, and I learned that art is exploration and play; you do not have to be the best or even remotely close to the best to make something truly astounding.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.claydaylbc.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/claydaylbc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Clay-Day-LBC-100091984638537/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDgbwTk3R8X4VA947XjfsQQ