OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Creativity, talent, art, and even cooking.

You might argue that all of it stats unformed like a lump of ceramic clay.

“I feel like I’m some kind of cooking show,” chuckles artist Marissa Childers.

It wasn’t so many years ago she thought her future career plans might involve accounting, but she couldn’t make the recipe or the numbers add up.

She recalls thinking, “Once I got a little more into it, I was like, ‘I’m going to hate my life if I continue doing this.'”

She took a ceramics course by accident and immediately started considering the possibilities.

She loved the tactile process of creating, not necessarily on a spinning wheel, but with her hands, applying texture, and even older ceramic images to her new work.

“You were molding yourself,” prompts her studio guest.

“Yeah. Right,” she agrees. “It was all very tactile.”

Conventional wisdom in the art world kept telling her that ceramics were more craft, that art, in everyday life meant less than something painted on canvas.

Childers argues, “The possibilities are endless. I can roll ceramics on texture. I can make all these weird forms and stick them all together. So it’s just opened up a little of that creative side for me.”

The more she worked, the more those old conventions and ways of thinking melted away.

Marissa started making more than just cups and saucers.

For her latest art exhibition, she made the tables too.

Art and function more fully explored.

She explains, “It’s just bringing in that craft into a gallery space and having that looked at and perceived a little differently.”

She teaches art now and continues her explorations.

The process of making art, of baking break, and of bringing fresh ideas straight from the oven builds on itself like a living thing.

She doesn’t see herself, or her work, ever being completely done.

Childers is one of three Spotlight Artists at the 2023 Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Momentum art show.

The show features Oklahoma based artists under the age of 30.

For more information on Momentum, visit the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition website.

For more information on Marissa Childers artwork, visit her website.