Think With Your Fingers: 5 Ways to Experience the Craft Center

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• Catherine Poland- [email protected]

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Most people don't play with or create art after about the third grade because they are too worried they don't have talent, according to Annika Nelson, the senior director of the Craft & Glass Centers. Her goal is to pull people out of that fear by providing a place on campus dedicated to encouraging anyone and everyone to squish their hands in clay, focus intently on delicate metal work, or explore shaping and shaving wood and foam.

The UC San Diego Craft Center makes the creative process accessible and inviting for everyone on and near campus. The center includes six separate studios: jewelry, woodworking, mixed media, ceramics, culinary arts and (the quintessentially San Diego) surfboard shaping class. Anyone who is interested can sign up for workshops, classes, or even sampling sessions. There are also open studios to play around with your own design or DIY lounges with guided projects.

Nelson sees the Craft Center as one of UC San Diego's hidden gems. "Why should someone take a class at the Craft Center?" Nelson asks. "Because you can! Everybody is welcome at the Craft Center. Whether you're students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members."

With such riches available, here are Nelson's five biggest takeaways about the Craft Center.

1. Find your place of belonging

"The Craft Center is a place where you can come to try something new and surprise yourself," Nelson says. "It really is designed to be a resource for everyone, whether that is a place for people to just come and hang out, a place for people to make friends, and a place for people to feel like they have a place to belong. Everybody is welcome to come here and explore."

2. Rediscover your creative voice

"One of the things that is really part of the magic of the Craft Center is making the creative process in all its abundance accessible and available for anyone," Nelson says. "Most people shelved their creativity in around third grade when they decided that they weren't an artist because they didn't know how to draw something realistically," she says. "And what I think is so important about the Craft Center and our amazing instructors is that they make a variety of methods in media accessible and give people a chance to sample different art-making processes to develop a visual voice that they may not have been aware of early on in their education."

3. Think with your fingers

"One of the most important things about some people's experience at the Craft Center is that there is a need to think with your fingers. And I think we're so often on our computers or on our phones, to be able to put those digital devices away and get our fingers dirty - squish clay, sand, wood - are essential experiences that are therapeutic."

4. Get a dose of inspiration and well-being

"Besides the beautiful facility that we have, our secret magic power is our instructors. We have the most incredibly kind, generous, patient instructors who are truly dedicated to making their medium accessible to people, especially people who've never done it before," Nelson says. "And having that interaction is so inspiring and so uplifting - I hope everyone walks away from their experience at the Craft Center with a feeling of well-being from being part of this unique creative community."

5. Celebrate failure, give it a try

"I celebrate failure," Nelson says. "And that's something I really hope the Craft Center can support: People shelving that inner critic, giving it a try, being comfortable with failure and just keep on keeping on."

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The reimagined Craft Center opened in 2021 and is tucked away on the upper level of the Mosaic building in the North Torrey Pines Living and Learning Neighborhood on the west side of the main campus. For those who will be driving, the address is 9605 Scholars Dr. North, La Jolla, CA 92093 and the Scholars Parking structure is the closest garage to the Craft Center.