Thursday, June 24, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Receptive Idea

Artist creates special pot for guests to sign at daughter's wedding

Bill Camp sits in his studio with the pot he created for his daughter's wedding. Well-wishers signed the unfired pot instead of a guest book. Photo by Cariño Casas Guests sign the pot created to replace the guest book at Carolyn and Doug Rhoton's wedding in April. COURTESY PHOTO Carolyn and Doug Rhoton

It is an idea so natural that father and daughter can scarcely remember which one thought of it first.

Bill Camp is a potter who taught art in local public schools for three decades. His daughter, Carolyn Rhoton, is a local art teacher who was getting married in April.

They tried to think of a way to personalize the wedding reception.

Camp had already agreed to throw some pots to hold flowers for table centerpieces.

Then Rhoton and her married sisters and sisters-in-law had agreed that the one memento from their own receptions that they hardly ever looked at was the guest book.

Before long, father and daughter decided he would throw one more pot -- one large enough, and still damp enough, for up to 100 guests to carve their names and greetings into it. Afterward, he would glaze and fire the pot in the Rhotons' wedding color, which happened to be blue.

And so it came to pass that, instead of a sign-in book, Carolyn and Doug Rhoton had a sign-in stoneware pot at their recent wedding reception.

It was placed on a doily on a Lazy Susan-style turntable on top of a waist-high pedestal. Camp also put ribbon-decorated carving sticks at the sign-in station -- as well as a brush, so well-wishers could whisk away any loose crumbs of clay after making their inscriptions.

"Instead of (names) hidden in a book, people can always look at the pot and be recognized," says Camp, 63. "It's more personal."

"My six (married) brothers and sisters said, `I wish I'd have thought of that,' " says Carolyn Rhoton.

Even Camp wishes he'd have thought of it sooner, especially during the six years he was a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. During that span, he did numerous wedding ceremonies, but never thought of making keepsake ceramics.

Rhoton, 34, says she and her husband have yet to select a place in their Sandy Valley home to display the pot, but already view it as an art piece that will become an heirloom.

Rhoton teaches art to third- through fifth-graders at Woolley Elementary School. She is the fourth of the eight children of Camp and his wife, Roma Lynn, another teacher, who works at Vegas Verdes Elementary School. Doug Rhoton is a senior computer programmer in Las Vegas.

Camp "just loves art," according to Carolyn Rhoton. "He loves ceramics. He's always finding new ways to use clay. He makes whistles and he makes lamps."

One of Camp's clay whistles depicts a family of four sitting on a log. Each person is a whistle with a different pitch. The father whistle sings the deepest note, and the younger child, the highest.

Rhoton thinks her dad's excitement at creating art, and helping others to create it, spilled over to her. She entered Brigham Young University thinking she would become a math teacher, but art is "just in my blood," she says.

Camp began his art teaching career in Las Vegas in 1967. He started at Orr Junior High, but moved to Chaparral High School, where he headed the art department for many years. In the 1980s he introduced Advanced Placement Art to the school district through the advanced placement program he founded at Chaparral.

Along the way he also earned a master's degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, taught at UNLV and taught evenings at the first campus of Sunset High School, an alternative high school program.

Camp retired in 1996, but not for lack of enthusiasm at working with young people. He estimates he taught about 110,000 students during his 30 years at all the schools combined.

Myasthenia gravis -- a rare neurological condition that Camp was diagnosed with in 1990 -- gradually forced him to teach while seated in a high-backed chair that could support his weakening neck muscles. Eventually, he lost the stamina to teach all day, reluctantly retiring.

Carolyn thinks the notion of the wedding pot sprang from a gift that Camp received when he retired. It was a hand-thrown pot signed by students and fellow teachers.

As his health permits, Camp keeps active in ceramics. He has learned to use body momentum and the leverage of his leg muscles to help his weakened arms and hands work the clay.

One current project entails making and firing 130 bowls for eating ice cream, to be passed out to relatives who will be in Las Vegas in early July for a family reunion. "They're a big ice-cream eating family," says Camp, who is inscribing the date and occasion on the bottom of each bowl.

He also cleverly designed his backyard studio to have a cistern below ground that collects the water used when he cleans the studio. The cistern has a pump to disperse the discarded water through his backyard lawn for irrigation.

For Camp, one of the fun aspects of his daughter's wedding reception was the impromptu socializing that occurred while people signed the pot, as others gathered to watch. "They did write things that they wouldn't have written in a book, like `We love you,' " he recalls.

Camp doesn't intend to make a sideline of doing wedding pots. But he won't mind if other potters do.

"I keep a low profile," he says. "I would give away a good idea in a heartbeat. More power to you."