Creating creatures with clay on Owatonna

OWATONNA — Two little goblins gave birth to a world of imagination in Owatonna on Saturday.

“Cameron Carl Cantaloupe,” a miniature clay goblin with wings, was just one of the characters to come out of the two storytelling sessions led by Maureen Carlson at the Owatonna Public Library.

Carlson, who runs a school called Maureen Carlson’s Center for Creative Arts, traveled down from Jordan, Minn., to give two performances of her unique take on storytelling with clay, in an event sponsored by the library and the Owatonna Arts Center.

“She is a renowned author and artist,” said Scott Roberts, business director for the Owatonna Arts Center.

During her performance, Carlson asks children in the audience to imagine a character and take turns telling the story of this character’s life. As the children add details, Carlson helps the children to form the character’s body and facial features in clay.

On Saturday, children took turns telling the story of Cameron Cantaloupe, a 42-year-old goblin with wings, who lives in a tree by Cedar Avenue and was looking for new friends. Details the kids came up with themselves.

As they took turns answering Carlson’s questions — questions about what Cameron looked like, where he lived, who he lived beside, where he worked, if he were married and where his wife worked — Carlson molded into shape the different parts of Cameron’s body. She handed out a piece for one of her listeners to mold a nose, she handed out a couple of hands and asked those listeners to tell her what Cameron can do with his hands, and she had children help with his legs. Carlson also made the goblin a hat by twisting two colors of polymer clay together. Then she made him a set of colorful wings by rolling many colors together then slicing the resulting roll open — a molding technique called millefiori.

“I do a lot of different things related to polymer clay,” Carlson said on Saturday. “This is a polymer clay, so we’re going to cook it and it’s going to get hard.”

After her performances on Saturday, Carlson said she was going to take the goblins to the Owatonna Arts Center and bake them at a low kiln rate, 265 to 275 degrees Farenheit, for a half hour.

Later this week, after the clay sculptures harden, the miniature goblins will return to the library.

“It’s going to come back to the library and this littler person is going to live at the library,” Carlson told her young audience on Saturday.

Throughout the presentation, the kids had the opportunity to participate in a number of different activities. Not only did they work with the clay and help tell the story, but they also pretended to knock on the door of the goblin’s tree house, by knocking on the library floor, and they told jokes at the end to try to make the goblin smile.

“She does this all year,” said Roberts. “She’ll actually use the students to create a character.”

Carlson even helped the children to warm up their creative thinking before the presentation began. She asked the children to reach high into the air and grab their imagination.

“Now put in your mouth,” she said. “What does it taste like?”

The clay goblins will go on display at the library this week.

Melissa Kaelin can be reached at 444-2372.

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