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Paul Briggs | Episode 706

Paul Briggs grew up in the Hudson Valley of Newburgh, NY. Paul’s first ceramics class was in high school. Paul’s creative process is pinching, and slab-built vessels,\ and his work is informed by art making as a spiritual practice. Paul is an Artist-Teacher at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design

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How can perfection be an enemy to a good message?

The artist Fred Wilson, to paraphrase him, he said, Beauty can hide things. There are lots of people who feel like they are not being seen for who they are. Beauty can hide things. There’s a term, it was introduced to me by talking about someone, a basketball player or someone being vulnerable to notice. Something about them makes them vulnerable to being seen. All you have to do is be female to be vulnerable to being seen in our society. But yeah, I think sometimes beauty can get in the way of an idea. Beauty can hit you so smack between the eyes and you won’t look any further.

What does authenticity mean to you?

My first thought when you asked me the prior question was, that was the thought. That you still have to be true to your way of working. For me, I don’t think I was working authentically because for me that refinement was trying to be something, trying to cover up something, trying to project a particular image. I was trying to fit myself literally into one of the vessels that I was making. The work that I am making now, I had somebody talk about it one time, they said, Oh, there’s some virtuosity here. And I was like, Oh no, don’t say that, please. I think what you are seeing is fluency. There is a fluency with the material that is just unavoidable. I’ve been working with it for awhile so there is a fluency in the handling, but it’s not trying to be beautiful. I’m handling it that way. There’s a wonderful line from, here’s a good one, Paul, I am aging myself too, from Roger Rabbit. Jessica Rabbit is in this conversation and basically her answer to why she is going through whatever she is going through and why she is with Roger Rabbit, she says,  I am not bad, I am just drawn that way. (laughter)  So I just think  you know, I definitely wasn’t perfect. I’m not perfect and this work has been so freeing to me when I just let go of that perfection, even though as I said, I struggle with it. But some people will work that way and it’s authentic for them, to work in a very refined way and again we have to approach and love both, appreciate both.

Can ugliness hide things also?

Yes, absolutely. I say to my students, and I forget who- one of my teachers I got this from, Don’t let anything in your work become the two-by-four. The professor described it to me as two-by-four art. The two-by-four is the form and there’s some content written on the two-by-four but you swing the two by four at the viewer’s head and you have to make the choice to be hit in the head by the form or read the content. More often than not they are going to duck. They are not going to look any further for the content. Don’t let anything in your work become a two-by-four if you have something you are trying to say.  So have the form and be part of the content as much as possible, don’t let the form, the beauty or the ugliness…this is what I was saying about the young woman and her cups, don’t lose that form. Some of these are ideas that you are talking about are going to get covered over  because you trim so well.

We talked about that with art, how would that play out in clay?

It really plays out in life. I think you hit that already, right? This constant trimming of your life is… throwing it again, making it again. I had someone tell me recently, I was like, how many of those do you think I can put out there. ANd they were like,  Well, clearly you really haven’t even scratched the surface of that form yet. And so I started making these forms again and I realized, Man, they are so right. I know so much more about this now. And I think that our life is like that. It’s a journey. It’s an absolute journey. I used to tell my students, Drive the turn you are in. You can’t be worried about the curve you just went around or the one that’s coming. Drive the curve you are in. You are too far out in front, who knows, you get around the next turn and it just might be a nice open road, straight, you know, you can floor it. Drive the curve you are in. You know how difficult it is to get students, when you are teaching them to throw, not to keep the first twenty. (laughter)

I put my first twenty up for sale, that’s how bad I was!

But you know, we are definitely going to get better and in certain areas of our life…when I am teaching students to pinch I go, Some of you throw really well, but think about the time you put in to getting there. Well I think the curve for pinching is not as long. But there definitely is one. It will take you a little while before you get fluent enough with it to make certain forms.

We are all on lockdown with Covid. How do you unwind when you have no place to go?

I am so fortunate to be in the space that I am in right now. I am in a live-work space. Obviously for me it’s the work. It’s the pinching. I love grabbing a medium size ball of clay. If it’s six pounds I have to be really, really present. One pound, that’s going to be frustrating too, with my big hands. The three pound range is just pure pinching and joy and I can do it. I have to be present. I can find flow, that real flow experience when you are pinching, I think that’s it. Nothing does it for me like that, it’s very meditative. And what’s great is that I can be at my desk and then I can turn make some art.

Book

How to be Antiracist by Ibram X.Kendi 

Contact

psbriggs.com

Instagram: @psbriggs3.0