Melanie Kovacs ’15: If you are ever looking for senior Najah Majors, it is a safe bet you will find her in one of two places: either the ceramics room, sculpting while chatting with her friends, or in the dark room, printing photos of her peers and teachers.
Majors only complaint about her love for art and ceramics is that she did not get into them at a younger age. Her introduction to ceramics began with Episcopal’s Empty Bowls project, which Najah said “nobody told me about it until after the program was cancelled. That’s when I realized I needed to make bowls because it’s fun.”
Major later revealed, though, that her true inspiration for getting into ceramics, was something far more personal. “The real inspiration was Ramen noodles. I love Ramen noodles. That is my favorite food. And I know people tell me I shouldn’t eat it, but I eat it anyway, so I wanted to make a bowl that was special for my Ramen noodles. So I came in and made a bowl. And it was horrible. It was tiny and had holes in it and I picked the wrong color […] I just kept making bowls, and then I decided to make bowls for people, but I ended up keeping them all. Now I have like thirty bowls just sitting in my house that no one is allowed to touch but me.”
Only a selected few, including Namia ‘14, Ms. Baker, Ms. Hutchinson, and Markuan Stutts ’13, have received one of Najah’s coveted bowls. “I made a couple of mugs. […] I always drink tea, so I just made a whole bunch of mugs. I make mugs and bowls and I have a couple of vases” (not vases, it’s vases).
Majors noted that she enjoys painting her own pieces, explaining, “I glaze my bowls with specifically high-fire glazes because boojie people use high-fire glazes, and I went through a boojie phase.”
As for her love of photography, Majors noted that unlike ceramics, this passion has been with her for as long as she can remember. Her journey began with a “corny little camera…taking pictures of shoes and leaves, and thinking ‘Oh my God, I’m so artsy’”.
Her inspiration, interestingly, stems from her childhood idol… Miley Cyrus. During her sixth grade year, in an attempt to become more like Cyrus, Majors had a plan to “get a guitar and take pictures…so [her] mom got her a camera for her birthday.”
However, It was not until meeting Charles Collins, EA Photography Teacher, that her passion for photography began to surface. Majors began by taking still life shots, followed by landscape, and then street photography. She enjoys street photography in particular because “I like to tell a story with my pictures. I want you to be able to tell what’s going on in the situation when I take the picture.”
Just this year, Majors began a new field of photography with portraits. When asked what sparked the interest, Majors responded, “It started off with my best friend, Namia. I liked her face, so I asked if I could take pictures of her… and I liked how they came out in the dark room, so I asked Ms. Hutchinson and Mr. Segal if I could take pictures of them … so I could show them in school.
As for the personalities behind these portraits, “I usually go for shy, awkward people, or people with nice hair, or nice eyes, or people who I know who will be completely uncomfortable in front of the camera; those are the people I take pictures of.”
To clarify, Najah added that, “I wanted to show [the shy and awkward people] that they look gorgeous, or that they can look as pretty as people who know that they’re pretty.”
So far, Majors has created four blogs dedicated to her photography: Haiti street photography, her student portraits, her personal blog (which has included a self photo every day since her 17th birthday), and a personal blog. Her newest upcoming project, which she will do along with Julia Lake ‘13, will be a photography book called “Two Sides of One City.” The book will compile both Lake and Major’s pictures, in different parts of Philadelphia, in order to “show the different sides of Philly than these Main Line kids see.”
While Majors’ love for ceramics is significant, she stressed the even greater significance that photography has had on her life. Though she hopes to continue ceramics if her college provides a free ceramics class, her plans are to continue with photography no matter what.“Photography is something I’ll continue until I get arthritis and I can’t use my cameras anymore.”