A dozen brown-and-white chickens raced for Meg Hankins (left) as she stuffed grass into the coop on her father's farm. McDaniel Art Lecturer Ken Hankins stands by watching, a smile on his bearded face. Their easy-going nature belies the hundreds of hours the two spent creating tiny clay tiles and gluing them onto a giant crab for Baltimore City's "Crabtown" project. The work was so painstaking, Meg's hands would ache for days, and even now, two months after completing "A Clay Crustacean" she still can't bend one of the fingers she stabbed with a clay shard.

Artists decorated nearly 160 fiberglass crabs that you can spot all across Baltimore City through November. "A Clay Crustacean" is perched at 10 Art Museum Drive (near the Baltimore Museum of Art). It's far from the Hankins' bucolic 50-acre farm in Hampstead where students of all ages come to take pottery lessons.

"It was like giving up your baby, we've had it for so long," Meg said.

But the father and daughter are growing accustomed to saying goodbye to their work. Last year, Ken decorated one of the fish in Baltimore City's "Fish out of Water" project. His creation, "Mosaic," was later purchased at auction for $10,000.

The Pearlstone Family Foundation bought Meg's Crab, "A Clay Crustacean," long before it was finished. Money from the sale of hers and all the crabs will benefit Baltimore City schools. Meg calls it a worthy cause.

"Public art is a way to do something we want, but the public benefits from it." She adds, "Art is something to live with every day."

Meg would know. She's an architect who teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

In his studio on a steamy summer Saturday, Ken Hankins lifts open the heavy lid on one of the kilns. Heat radiates. The temperature reads 900 degrees. Ken describes the difficult process of bringing Meg's crab creation to life.

"We would roll clay slabs, she'd put the glaze on, and we'd cut them. She poured glaze everywhere."

The clay needs to fire in the kiln twice. It's a long process that's made even more tricky because the glaze turns different colors depending on its chemical content, the heat, even the type of clay used. Meg's vision involved a changing landscape of colors from blue to red. However, "A Clay Crustacean" is mainly blue because red glaze is a difficult color to make.

As for the thousands of tiny vividly colored squares, Meg used every last one.

Now the Hankins want to make some art they can keep. What animal is next? "Not a crab or a fish," says Meg, with a knowing smile.

For more information, visit these Web sites:

http://www.shilohpottery.com/

http://www.crabtown.org/