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March Update

On Saturday 5 March 2022 I had a special student come and learn polymer clay from me. His name is Nickel. He is 22 years old and is autistic. He only started to talk at age 6, and was only ready to go to first grade at the age of 14. He goes to a special school here in Pretoria which focuses on speaking English, rather than his home language Afrikaans because he can form the softer words better.

I taught polymer to his special needs teacher and she told me about Nickel, that he is shy, has long hair and loves to draw fantasy characters in pencil. When he arrived he had no idea what his mother had prepared for him. His eyes lit up when he saw all my characters on the shelves. He had drawn over 100 characters.

I have the habit of looking straight into somebody’s eyes and asking pertinent questions in a kind and friendly way. He reciprocated by looking me in the eyes and later when I asked him if he would like to participate in regular society and live in his own place and have a job he said he would.

I have spoken to his mother at length about a mentorship or intern programme for him where I nurture his sculpture skills and apply these skills to his fantasy pieces, eventually teaching his to make polymer press molds and silicon rubber molds to reproduce his pieces for sale on Instagram where he works certain days from my studio and from home. He is camera shy but here are pictures of the sculptures he made during our meeting.