NEW ART MAJORS SOUGHT CLAY DAY PRESENTED AT CSUN.

Byline: Sylvia L. Oliande Staff Writer

NORTHRIDGE - Barefoot and wearing clay-streaked jeans and a T-shirt, her sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, Leticia Alvarado, 18, sat cross-legged atop a table and hunched over the humanoid figure she and her teammates were sculpting.

The hollow-eyed clay figure represented death, she said. Surrounded by skulls, it sat with knees bent, the tail draped behind it. A human embryo lay in a fetal position within its gaping mouth.

Titled ``Devouring Life,'' the sculpture created by Alvarado, Ian Garrett, 18, and Melanie Wightman, 16, clearly was meant to evoke an emotional response.

Disgust and sympathy is the response of passers-by, Alvarado said. ``Obviously, I wasn't going for, oh, how pretty.''

``Sculpture and 3-D expression (make it) a lot easier to convey feeling because it's tactile,'' she said. ``It's not like two-dimensional, where you say, let's see what kind of emotion we can portray on a flat surface. With sculpture, it's let's walk around and see the many dimensions that convey that feeling.''

The teens from North Hollywood High School were three of some 150 students from area schools taking part in Clay Day 2000: The Olympics of Ceramic Art at California State University, Northridge.

Sponsored by the college's ceramics department and the Los Angeles Unified School District, Clay Day featured events that required pottery wheel throwing and hand-building - molding and sculpting.

Organizers said the event, the first of its kind at CSUN, was designed to stoke an interest in the arts, and especially ceramics, in schools.

``Part of the university's role is to help foster the growth of the arts,'' said Chris Turk, head of CSUN's ceramics department. ``We want them to look at us when they decide to go to college, and we want them to know a career in the arts is a viable option.''

In addition to North Hollywood High, local students hailed from Grover Cleveland High School in Reseda, James Monroe High School in North Hills, John Muir Middle School in Burbank, U.S. Grant High School in Van Nuys and Hillside Middle School in Simi Valley.

They competed individually and in teams to build or throw the tallest structures, the widest pots, the most imaginative vehicle and the most fantastic sculpture.

Most had only worked with clay for one or two semesters as part of elective classes at their schools.

Many showed artistic promise, turning a lump of clay into a dragon, a water goddess and a snake-charmer's basket filled with reptiles. Others proved adept with the potter's wheel, gently shaping a blob of clay into a vase or a cup.

Miguel Menesses, 17, said he had never been interested in art until he walked into the ceramics class at Monroe High last fall and found he was at home on the wheel.

He was meticulous in his work even as other contestants around him strove for speed, width or height. He said he wasn't particularly interested in winning any event but wanted to create good work.

Menesses has decided to try to make a career out of the art, and he enjoys that it requires him to concentrate and forget everything else for awhile.

``You don't think about the things going on in your life - your parents, your girlfriend,'' Miguel said. ``I think I'm too pressured with people, but when I'm doing the pottery wheel I'm free, my mind's free.''

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Photo: (1 -- 2) Above, North Hollywood High School students Ian Garrett and Leticia Alvarado, both 18, work on a joint project for a ceramics competition during Clay Day 2000, an event held Saturday on the campus of California State University, Northridge. At left, Garrett, Alvarado and Melanie Wightman fashioned an evocative portrayal of death they titled ``Devouring Life.''

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News