In room J12, ceramics and sculpture students are typically getting their hands dirty molding clay. This past Wednesday, March 5, North Penn High School alum Nate Aderman came back to help mold futures. Now the owner of his own trophy and award shop, Aderman Awards, Aderman got his start from North Penn’s ceramic classes. Wednesday offered the chance for students to see a live mold-making demonstration while Aderman explained and answered questions about casting and mold-making, as well as his pathway to making a living off of his passion for art.

Examples of molds and different steps of the casting process were passed around the room, letting students get a hands-on feel at different stages of clay, as well as a career option involving ceramics and sculpting. Aderman explained the process of beginning with a clay model, which is used to create a rubber mold. The mold later is filled with the material of choice for the project at hand – in the demo’s case, plaster. During the plaster mixing process, those present got to observe the different stages the project takes, from its being poured to being set; this process is typically upscaled for business, and is balanced between multiple other steps.

“While I’m letting things soak, I’m chasing the last round where I’m pouring plaster. I’m usually doing six or eight molds at once, and I’m mixing in a five gallon bucket instead of this little mix right here. I’m juggling six, seven different processes at once,” explained Aderman.

Multiple steps aren’t the only part of the process; time and money are also all plugged into the equation for Aderman, who stresses the importance of patience over speed, noting that quality could be sacrificed when rushed.

“Everything is just a game of patience and time. We’re always looking for ways to make things faster. There are ways to make plaster cure faster, and that’s for me to dump more plaster into it, but then you’re risking air bubbles in your casting and getting a bad casting; it doesn’t flow as nicely,” Aderman said.

“You have your material, you have your time. What they taught in art school is to just keep track of your materials. Keep track of how much everything costs at the end, you just multiply it by three or four, and say that’s about how much it should cost you. Trying to do that in business, it’s hard,” Aderman further explained.

On the other end, time is an important factor in project management and helps to make the process less “nail-biting,” as Aderman describes. “Keeping track of time is important, and it’s something that I got made fun of for at the trophy shop, but I’ll know how long things will take next time; I know I’m gonna make the deadline.”

Though Aderman knows plaster in and out, it isn’t his only craft, and it’s also not at all what he expected himself to be doing. He explained that his business also utilizes bronze in his works in addition to hand-painted plaster. Before running Aderman Awards, however, he was familiar with the medium during internships while attending Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. Even before bronze, Aderman began in ceramics, both in college and at North Penn.

“To make a longer story short, just bear with it. I feel like I stuck with it, trying to find an art thing, because in college, I found an internship for ten dollars an hour to play with clay. They paid me to build clay objects. I would go for two, three hours every Tuesday or Thursday, or something like that, so that little opportunity while I was in school showed me that there’s money to be made there,” Aderman reflected.

Following his experience in clay is when Aderman moved into the world of bronze, taking on an internship with a bronze foundry. “How are you going to say no? I just want experience. I just want to be in the space. I just want to be around the stuff,” Aderman said, explaining that he began with an unpaid internship.

“Getting that foot in the door allowed me to see statues getting started and finished. I got to take resources and put some of what I was messing with in school into my portfolio. The stuff that I’m doing now is all two feet and under because they’re trophy size, but you can apply these skills.”

Following his internship, however, Aderman was let down when he approached the retired teacher he interned for about further opportunities.

“When I finished my internship, I had a heart-to-heart with him. He was like, ‘Nate, to be honest, I can’t afford you. I got two kids on the way,’ and stuff like that. He was like, ‘It’s not gonna be for you.’ So, I left there kind of disheartened, because I did a giant project and then there’s no future there,” Aderman said.

That rejection led to redirection for Aderman, who found himself walking into a trophy shop that caught his eye, beginning the road to his own award business. “I stumbled into the trophy shop, and that opened my eyes again. Art as a profession only came because I kept putting my foot in the door. Without pursuing it myself, there was no real avenue.”

Aderman explained to the room of students that, though the path he took was unexpected, different avenues were paved for him on “the highway of life,” as he metaphorized.

“Growing up, I went to trade shows and craft shows and watched people walk by, not buy anything. I myself did a couple craft shows, saw little to no sales. You carry all of these things out, you think you have a passion and you set it out, and you sell two things a day. It’s disheartening. Growing up, I always had it in my mind that there’s not a business or cash flow, you can’t make a living off of art,” Aderman reflected.

However, through persistence, doors opened for Aderman, allowing him to do what he once saw as impossible: making a living off of art. Aderman credits “word of mouth” and “putting his foot in the door” for success, adding that self-marketing and communication plays a large role in success. Passing this anecdote on to a room of students, taking the same classes that Aderman once did himself, allowed different pathways of opportunity to show themselves as realistic options for passionate young artists.

“It’s a passion hobby. It’s finding something to keep you busy that’s not staring at a screen. I took our classes before scenes were a problem, and it kept my mind occupied. It’s meditative- I start a project and literally zone out; I don’t know what time it is until it’s done, and then I’ll look at the clock and it’s 2:30AM. You’re not caring about outside influences at that point,” Aderman said, encouraging involvement in art.

Even further than discussing the benefits and processes of different molding, sculpting, and casting methods, Aderman’s coming to North Penn to speak to the school’s young artists encourages students to recognize what he learned himself through experience, that making a living off of art is a possibility. From the hands-on learning about sculpture to the life lessons about flexibility and determination, Aderman helped sculpt artistic pathways for the students of North Penn.