When 36-year-old sculptor Silas Gaddie describes what he is, “artist” isn’t the word that comes out. “I’m just a kid that plays in the dirt and loves nothing more than to create something out of a wad of mud,” Gaddie says. The St. Joseph artist has gone from winning awards at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art’s high school exhibition in his younger years to creating pieces like his “head mounts” (pictured) and “tree pots” series that steer clear of the pottery wheel. In fact, Gaddie says that trying to test the limits of what he can pull off with clay leads to him losing roughly 40 to 50 percent of the work he creates. But testing those limits to get something great stokes Gaddie’s creative fire. “The only thing that finds me any solace in that is I have to sit right back down and make another one,” Gaddie says. “I want to create one-of-a-kind things every single time.” Gaddie’s work is on display at Gallery 7, 118 N. Seventh St.