Ashley Wyrick is one of the seven art teachers at Wando, but her abilities go way beyond teaching students to create art.
She also teaches AP Art History and AP Studio.

When she was in high school, she was very passionate about art and took as many art classes as she could.

“My senior year I decided that I wanted to actually focus in the arts, and so I accepted a place at Clemson University in the fine arts program,” Wyrick said.

Her senior year at Clemson, she had to declare a specific area in the fine arts program.

“I declared pottery and ceramics,” she said, “and so I focused on ceramics my final year.”

Following graduation from Clemson, she knew she wanted to live in an area that was art-oriented, which is why she chose Charleston. Her goal was to become a working artist, but she found that her dream came with challenges.

“I thought ‘I’ll just be an artist and survive!’ — but I realized it is really hard to survive as a working artist, so I had some other odd jobs,” Wyrick said. “I was working in that studio space doing my own work selling in that gallery, but also working somewhere else on the side to pay the bills.”

After that first year out of college, she knew she needed to do more than work side jobs and occasionally sell her work.

“I was actually able to get a job at the Gibbes Museum,” she said. “They used to have a working studio there and they hired me as a ceramics teacher for adult pottery so I taught pottery classes for about a year.”

It was after this experience teaching adult pottery that Wyrick knew she wanted to be a teacher. She went back to school and got a degree to be able to teach.

“I came through an alternative route — it was called critical needs at the time, and so there was a critical need in the area for art teachers, so I was able to be hired as a teacher,” she said.

She started at Wando in 2003 as a part-time art teacher.

“The following year in 2004, they opened up this new building and the program had grown a little bit, so they took me on as a full time teacher,” Wyrick said.

Currently she is given the opportunity to teach select art students wheel throwing.

“I currently have two students who are wheel throwing as part of their concentration,” Wyrick said. “It comes full circle for me because that’s what I went to school for and now I am able to teach students how to basically complete that same craft that I learned.”

She has no regrets in her leap of faith that diverted her from her “dream” job to instead start teaching.

“The nice thing about being an art teacher is with demonstrations and developing new lessons and new projects, I get to still be creative,” Wyrick said.