Shawanda Corbett never met a challenge she didn’t like.
The 22-year-old was born with one arm and no legs, but, in a world where so many people stood ready to hold her back, protect her or keep her shoved out of sight, she refused to let her missing limbs define her.
Corbett is not a woman who believes in limitations and hasn’t stopped pursuing her dreams, as a ceramics major at Mississippi University for Women. Physical challenges have made her work harder, but not made her give up. When she’s not working on her own pieces, she’s helping others with theirs.
She recently wrapped up her first summer session teaching ceramics to children at Rosenzweig Arts Center, and Saturday, she was at the RAC’s front counter, volunteering. She’s found such pleasure in giving to others, and she’s been so inspired by her professors, the college junior thinks she may eventually become a college ceramics professor, too.
Rising above
Corbett was born in Long Island, N.Y., into a poor family with six siblings and two parents, who were unsure of how to handle their precocious, fiercely independent child.
Their solution was to lock her away in a dark bedroom, where she spent the majority of her time drawing and painting to stave off the loneliness. Her brothers were encouraged to pursue menial labor jobs, but the girls were given few options other than becoming “barefoot and pregnant.” She was raised to believe her only real career choices were drugs and prostitution.
Still, she clung to her self-worth.
Against her parents’ better judgment, she played basketball, field hockey and volleyball. Her grandmother insisted she be exposed to a wide range of music, so after hearing a Bach concerto, she decided she wanted to play piano, too.
One afternoon, tired of being trapped inside on a snowy day, she put on her sister’s clothes, stuffed the dangling pants with other clothing to make “legs,” and snuck outside, where she spent a glorious afternoon rolling in the snow and making snow angels.
After her father died, she and her mother moved to Pascagoula, where a high school guidance counselor encouraged her to apply for college at MUW. She enrolled thinking she wanted to study graphic design, but she quickly realized she didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as she enjoyed ceramics, the elective she had taken on a whim.
Corbett, always on the move, always looking for the next new mountain, had found her niche.
Throwing clay
Then, she met the potter’s wheel. Corbett had managed fairly well with handbuilding — a method by which pottery is shaped and created solely by hand, without the use of a potter’s wheel, but she wasn’t sure how she would fare when it came time to begin learning to “throw” the clay.
At first, it was extremely hard, she admits. She had always been competitive, both with herself and others, but now she had to work doubly hard. She refused to allow any special treatment, believing there’s a way to do everything and with enough practice, nothing was beyond her reach.
MUW Professor Ian Childers was a little nervous, too. Corbett was a great student, fun to have in class, always engaged, always joking, always ready to meet the challenge. But when he first met her, he wasn’t worried about her disability, as much as he was concerned he might not have the skills to teach her how to overcome it.
He soon realized she was more than capable. What she lacked in physical ability, she made up for by working twice as hard.
“Whenever Shawanda was learning something new, she would automatically dedicate more time to it than everyone else, not because she was a slow learner, but because she wanted to excel beyond her peers,” Childers said. “I would give the students an assignment that required 10 thrown pieces due by the end of the week, and Shawanda would meet the challenge and multiply it by 7, turning in 70 pieces.”
Growing stronger
Corbett said she will spend 13 to 21 hours working on a piece, lost in her music and her art as she strives to give her best. She practices techniques over and over, watching Childers and her fellow students, finding videos of one-handed potters on YouTube.
She was particularly inspired by an assignment to make four identical cups. It sounded simple, but proved frustratingly, exhilaratingly challenging. Her first cups were not very good, but she kept trying. Now, she said, she looks back at those early efforts and can see how much she’s grown as an artist.
She continues to grow as a person, as well. She has learned to move beyond the hurtful moments of her childhood, shaping new worlds in clay. If she hits a low point and finds herself struggling with a new form, she’ll spend some time making ceramic cups to realign herself.
She finds inspiration in nature, poetry, her memories and, of course, in Childers, whom she said she watches constantly, trying to emulate.
“He made something of himself, and I was like, ‘If he could do it, I can,'” she said, fiddling with a folded paper clip as she sat in a back room of the RAC Saturday.
Failure is not an option. For one thing, with both her parents dead now, there’s nowhere else for her to go. For another, pride won’t let her fall.
As she grows into her art, she finds herself creating work that mirrors her. She makes her cups without feet. “Because I don’t have feet!” she jokes. Many of her recent pieces are brightly-colored, painted with circus themes, but tinged with darker motifs.
In everything she creates, she tries to tell a story about who she is, where she’s been, what she’s seen and where she’s going.
Ever moving forward, the girl who once was held back has become unstoppable. And that’s just the way she likes it.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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