McComb native Hillary Fairburn is bringing her art home after four years of studying sculpture at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Fairburn graduated Friday with a degree in sculpture and will show her art in Pike National Bank’s Community Room from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 21.
She said her sculptures — she calls them leg forms — were inspired by her childhood days of playing the piano.
“With few points on the ground, the movements are portrayed as quick gestures,” she said. “This reminds me of my childhood when I played the piano and my favorite notes to play were staccato.”
Fairburn is bringing four cast iron pieces and nine clay pieces to the community room. The sculptures were the same pieces used in her senior thesis. The iron pieces are made using USM’s cupola, which is used to heat iron and melt it.
“USM has one of the biggest cupolas in the nation,” Fairburn said.
“It is where you put chunks of iron in the top and it melts it to where it gets well over 2,000 degrees,” she said. “You pour the iron into a mold.”
“The clay ones are all thrown on the wheel, the potter’s wheel,” Fairburn said.
She said the pieces won’t be for sale at the show.
“I just want people to see them before I try to sell them,” Fairburn said.
She does have some pieces for sale at Japonica Gallery at 119 N. Sixth St., in McComb.
Fairburn said sculpting wasn’t her first career choice.
“I started as an art education major and (USM officials), because of budget cuts, shut down the program,” Fairburn said. “(Sculpting) is definitely a God thing because whenever I started at Southern, I had never touched clay. I had never done an iron pour or anything like that.”
Then, one semester she picked ceramics as an elective course.
“Within the first few weeks I knew that is what I was supposed to be doing,” Fairburn said.
Now, she hopes to bring her knowledge to McComb.
“I want to have my own studio and maybe teach pottery workshops,” she said.
Fairburn, a 2008 North Pike High School graduate, is the daughter of Victor and Karen Fairburn of McComb.
