Not unlike the kilns that are a part of Sophie Gibson’s work, she is fired up and ready to go. Sophie is in her first year as the Loomis Chaffee ceramics teacher and, starting September 18, will have an exhibit, Aerial Reverie, in the Sue and Eugene Mercy Jr. Gallery.

In 2017 Sophie graduated from the Brown University/Rhode Island School of Design dual-degree program with bachelor’s degrees in illustration and history. She went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree in ceramic art from Alfred University. Sophie grew up in Charlottesville, Va., where she attended St. Anne’s Belfield School, an independent school where she would later teach. Her work in figurative ceramic sculpture has been exhibited widely.

Two days before classes started this fall, she talked about why she became a teacher and what the role means to her.

“The people I respected the most were teachers,” Sophie said. “I like what I do, and I like being in a group environment. Sharing the magic of working with clay with people who haven't experienced it before is such a joy.”

She stretches out the word “such,” and a smile comes across her face as if she were molding a piece of clay right then and there. She has goals for this first year.

“Students come in with a creative spark,” she said. “You never want to damage that. I want students to come to understand how clay operates and to form a relationship with the material. I want the ceramics classroom to be a space where students can be calm and work slowly, with focused awareness. This will require me to be centered and grounded, responsive to who the students are coming in. I’ve always admired teachers who intentionally create a tone shift when you enter their classroom, and then you go back to whatever it is, all the other things to need to do. Clay requires patience and resilience, and I think that practicing these qualities is a beneficial antidote to our fast-paced contemporary culture.”

During orientation for new faculty members in August, the group learned about the school's new strategic plan, which includes an emphasis on wellness.

“I feel I can connect to that part of strategic plan,” Sophie said. “I hope that students can center themselves, feel calm, and experience curiosity and wonder in my classroom.”

Curiosity and wonder, and a passion for working with people have led Sophie to many places. “I enjoy being with a group and working towards a good common goal,” she said.

In the summer of 2015, she spent three months with 20 others cycling from Portsmouth, N.H., to Vancouver, British Columbia, to promote affordable housing through an organization called Bike & Build. Along the way they helped build homes. Well before that, in the summer before she was in eighth grade, she participated in the Bridges to Community program, which built cinder block houses in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. She would go on many more trips with the organization as a student and then led two trips when she was teaching at her alma mater, St. Anne’s Belfield.

In the summer of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she found comfort outside, working as a farmhand, planting and harvesting, for Belair Farm CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in Charlottesville. She has gone back each summer.

“You get comfortable with your crew when you are farming,” Sophie said. “There is this nonverbal communication where people just fill in and are able to see what needs to be done. It’s magical when you get to that stage. I think athletes experience this phenomenon lot, and farming is the realm where I've gotten to experience it.”

Viewers of her show in the Mercy Gallery will experience some of Sophie’s portrait sculptures. Some of the pieces are based on her friends.

She said she was drawn to portrait sculpture by the people factor. “I really love people,” Sophie said. “When I am getting to know a person, I ask a lot of questions about their background. I studied history as an undergraduate, and I’m always digging to understand why people behave as they do, or where their specific interests come from. Portrait sculpture is a different way of getting to know someone.”

Sophie takes pictures of her subjects and might videotape a conversation with the person, all to understand the subject better, see their expressions, and bring them to life through clay. “It is easy to focus on the anatomy,” she said, “but if you render something to death, you can lose the essential spark that makes the person feel unique. Portrait artists have always tried to access depth through surface.”

Sophie is doing so with her hands, which is fitting for someone who takes a hands-on approach to many aspects of her life.

Dates: Aerial Reverie will run from September 18 to October 26, with an opening reception from 6 to 7 p.m. on September 18.

Mercy Gallery hours: Monday through Friday 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Sunday 1–5 p.m. Closed Saturday.

Sophie’s description for the exhibition: Taking inspiration from Gaston Bachelard’s “Air and Dreams, An Essay on the Imagination of Movement,” Sophie Gibson’s solo show explores the nature of imagination and embodiment through a series of compositional gestures. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a larger-than-life sculpture of a meditating/dreaming being titled “Constructive Rest.” The weighty mass of this reclining ceramic body is juxtaposed against 16 small, foreshortened relief figures that dance across the wall and evoke a skyscape.