He didn’t know you were supposed to take art so seriously, Ky Johnston said, but that was 16 years ago, when he was 17, and had just moved to Mississippi from Brazil.

Yet he ended up majoring in art, earned two degrees in it, and for the last seven years has taught ceramics at Delta State University.

From the time he was a child, he drew a lot. At Mississippi College, he hadn’t decided on a major and his father reminded him, “Well, you like to draw.”

Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.

At MC, he majored in art education and got a sampling of art in many forms, such as painting, ceramics and photography. In grad school at Ole Miss, he earned a master’s degree in fine arts. That’s where he chose ceramics. As a painter, he said, he could set up and paint wherever he wished, but in ceramics there was more of a technical side because “you have to have a studio, learn to make the glazes and to operate a wheel and a kiln.”

Ky — that’s short for Benjamin Kyzar Johnston — bought a small electric wheel when he was in college and still uses it. He has also used a kick wheel and a treadle, but regardless of the kind, you control it with your foot and leg.

The early stages of making pottery are frustrating, Ky said. And if you mess up?

“In ceramics you have enough casualties in the regular process, so you kind of get comfortable with tossing your mistakes,” he said.

His favorite subjects in ceramics, Ky said, “change all the time, according to what equipment I have access to or the kind of clay I’m using.”

He had worked with hand-dug clay and, after graduating from Ole Miss, he began doing red earthware. He gets most of his clay, already prepared for use, from a lady in Morton.

Colors and glazes? “I never thought of a favorite,” but he added, “I like coming up with a new idea, with a new technical challenge.”

His ideas might come from nature or architecture or a combination, and if he has an idea when he’s not at home, he’ll make a quick sketch. If he’s at home, he’ll go to his studio and try it out. A good percentage of his ideas come from working with the materials, and a lot are from historical forms. Some of his work, such as pieces that look like shoots of bamboo, came from a process called extruding, or pushing out the clay that is packed into a machine — “like a professional Play-Doh machine.”

“I can kind of manipulate it,” he said, “but I don’t try very hard to force clay to do something. I look around and, if there are things that kind of suggest a form, then I know how to deal with it.”

He usually doesn’t sit at his wheel and make one pot or one mug, but, “I’ll make a board full of mugs or bowls. Most who learn to make kitchen pottery end up making things in a repetitive way. Once you’re comfortable with it, the repetitive quality can be therapeutic.”

In dealing with imagery, Ky said, “Whether it’s on pots or whatever, there’s something about that — I don’t know — I guess there’s a kind of different tension. There’s a craftsman side of things, and you do things because you love the craftsmanship or the materials or something else. There’s the conscious fact you know other people are going to see it and have some sort of reaction to it. There’s a little more stress involved.”

His first use of clay, until he went to college and took a class under Dr. Sam Gore, was when he was in the sixth grade and had some modeling clay.

Ky has a studio in his home in Merigold and also uses the one on campus, but his art isn’t just ceramics, for he’s also an accomplished painter and likes to build things. Some of his pieces are on display in Vicksburg, at the Attic Gallery at Washington and Grove streets.

Ky is also a musician, having played guitar — which he taught himself — in several bands.

He’s also bilingual. Though born in McComb, he spent most of his youth in Brazil where his father was a missionary, thus he speaks Portuguese and gets to use it when he sees several students at Delta State who are from Brazil.

Ky’s art doesn’t fit into a category. There might be face mugs or bowls or vases. Some could be described as free-form, maybe abstract, others more traditional. He pursues whatever design he wishes, whatever he envisions or feels.

“It seems that the public is pretty open to the artistic forms and interpretations in pottery,” he said.

And while there seems to be no bounds to his creativity with clay, one thing remains unchanged: “I’m still drawing as much as I did when I was a kid.”