Shared Creation

Jai Spicer ’25 runs a secondhand clothing line that he calls Former Toddler. He takes second- hand textiles — blouses, crewnecks, T-shirts, hoodies — that he finds at Goodwill and prints, simply, “Former Toddler,” on the article of clothing. The shirts, if they aren’t tie-dye, are generally a bright wash of color. They’re vibrant and well-loved and, stamped against their childlike effervescence, is a statement that attempts to cling to youth in a stark black font you might find in an Excel doc. It makes for a fun dichotomy — the same way you might look back at childhood photographs of yourself on your birthday.

By way of promotion, Jai will take these shirts to concerts and give them to the artist he’s

seeing, and then he’ll post the interaction on his Instagram (@formertoddlershirts). In one video, during a Briston Maroney concert, Jai asks the crowd to pass a balled-up Former Toddler shirt toward the stage, as a gift for Maroney. When the shirt gets to Maroney, and he reads the message, you can hear something break in his voice, a sense of gratitude for one artist sharing his work with another artist.

For any creator, there is something essential in the act of sharing your work. To a certain extent, the viewer is as important as the artist. A work unseen by anyone else but its creator does not exist. Jai possesses, uniquely, the creativity of the artist and the rigor of an entrepreneur. And it’s in this spirit of teaching artists to share their work and promote themselves that, each spring, Collegiate holds the Maker Faire, an event that celebrates makers in the Collegiate community.

“This is a highly academic school that celebrates academic success all the time, and I think it’s really important to celebrate a lot of other kinds of success that both our students and faculty are doing,” says Director of Instructional Technology Patty Sinkler, who helps organize the Maker Faire. “The Maker Faire celebrates the creative success of our community that people don’t know about. We have so many people that are doing all kinds of brilliant things in the arts, and it’s important to share that work.”

The Maker Faire showcases work from artists like Jai, who, during the event, held demonstrations on how he hand prints his shirts. “The Maker Faire gives creators a great opportunity to show off their work,” Jai says. “And it introduced me to artists in our community that I had no idea were artists.” It’s a special event: Where else can you discover that your Upper School science teacher is a brilliant ceramic artist or that a Lower School student is a precocious wizard with a sewing needle?

To practice any art, regardless of expertise, is a way to sharpen foundational skills and connect yourself more thoroughly to the world around you. “We’re giving students a safe space to experiment, to try new things, and to ultimately be successful, because just by making something that you’re putting out into the world, you are successful: you’ve created something,” says Catherine Clements, who, in her domain of the Middle School library, plays a crucial role in celebrating student artwork.

Creating is another form of growing. You learn about both yourself and the world around you in the process of artmaking. For young students, artmaking is another form of creative problem solving, an idea the Maker Faire helps promote. “This is a space where we can tailor a curriculum around building core skills — like perseverance, problem solving, resilience, creativity — in students that other areas of academics might not directly teach,” says Rachael Rachau, who plays a role in organizing the Maker Faire. “So, yes, we celebrate students making things. But we also help students understand the skills they’re building in the act of making.”

Each week, leading up to the Maker Faire, as another form of showcasing student creativity, the Cougar Shop displayed a student’s artwork that would later be featured in the Maker Faire. The range of works is indicative of the creativity the Maker Faire celebrates. Addison Tyler ’31 displayed her large, elegantly fluffy turtles that she crocheted. Reeve Fowler ’34 showcased a board game he invented with his 3rd Grade classmates. “I’m just really glad I get to show off my work in the spaces around Collegiate,” Addison says. “But, more importantly, I’m excited by the opportunity to share my work. Giving my work to other people and seeing how happy it makes them makes me really happy. There’s a difference between showing your work and sharing it.”

After the play of creating pieces, something frequently done in isolation, there is the communal play of sharing work. That’s where meaning is made: when the work begins speaking to the viewer. This is what the Maker Faire celebrates — the essential qualities of growing and communicating through creative works. “For me, creating is a vessel to convey emotions when words won’t suffice,” Jai says. “Art is a universal language. Because I might not be able to explain how I’m feeling to you verbally, but if I can convey my emotions through painting a picture or drawing something or making a sculpture or a shirt — using all the materials

that I found — I can vocalize what’s going on. For me to share that vocalization is an important part of the process.”