Introducing Aidan Lowery, TAC student, volunteer and son of our current Director of Education, Heather Lowery. We recently had a chance to talk to him while he took a break from helping to organize classroom supplies and Recycled art.
Aidan took his first class at TAC when he was just 5-years old. He took a session involving ‘sculpey’, a beginners’ tool for learning to sculpt or make pottery. “That didn’t last long,” Aidan says, “I wanted to move to the real thing.” The ‘real thing’ in this case was a ceramic class with older students. Apparently, it worked.
Thirteen years later he is still taking ceramics classes and now does functional or hand building work. His interests are too many to list here but the list starts with remote control planes, Virtual Reality gaming, welding, re-building an old school bus into a combination mobile home and studio, and taking care of his four pet rats: Soot, Ash, Pluto and Pumpkin.
A life-long Highland Park resident, Aidan attended Ravinia Elementary School and then Highland Park High School as a homeschooler. “He has so many interests and hobbies,” adds his mom, “that traditional education seemed too limiting for his active mind.” The results speak for themselves. Aidan literally grew up at TAC and is part of the great community that surrounds it.
In his thirteen years of attending classes he has become an accomplished and award-winning ceramicist. Please join TAC in wishing Aidan the best of luck in the adventure ahead. In this case ‘adventure’ is a very appropriate word: Aidan plans to attend school to become a lineman – not the football type, either – the REAL electric and power supply type.
Volunteers like Aidan are crucial to TAC right now. The current situation involves eliminating positions, cutting back spending, reinventing programs and events. It’s safe to say that it is a challenging time but, despite the hardships of a global pandemic and its effect on programing, TAC is still committed to delivering mission-critical projects, continuing to ‘make art available to all’ and to collaborating with other community groups to ‘do well while doing good’.
Please stay connected to us and reach out if you have time to volunteer, stop by and check out the galleries if you’re in the neighborhood, or make a note to include us in your end of year giving.
Thanks to all of our volunteers, students, faculty, board and staff for sticking with us in these difficult times.