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PJ Hargraves | Episode 960

PJ Hargraves is originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and is currently teaching, technician-ing, and maintaining an active studio practice in Northeast Ohio. PJ holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and loves making playful and joyous pottery, and sculptures.

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With a variety of ages, how do you make everyone feel included especially when they have divergent point of view?

I think for myself I make sure every time I go into the classroom I pack all of my positive energy and enthusiasm for ceramics and I bring that to the classroom. I think it’s pretty evident to the students and so I also try to really stress the fact that there’s so many things to discover and I am by no means an expert on ceramics. There’s so many things to learn. So I go in there with that kind of attitude that we are all going to learn here together and whatever you are excited about I would like you to share that with us and maybe we can all learn something from that too. So I think that brings everyone to the same playing field.

I believe so. In my classes I have observed that where once they start to open up their shell a little bit socially and talk to some of the other students around them they feel more comfortable making a piece that could possibly fail, rather than just taking the easy route because they don’t want to be embarrassed in front of the class.

How do you help a student still find their own individual voice even though you have to follow a curriculum and get a set of skills across to them?

So especially in a beginning class, like a beginning hand-building class where there would typically be a project that is an introduction to slab or coil, with those projects I try to make them open-ended enough where the students are learning the technique but they are able to turn it into whatever they want to make with the project and personalize it in a way.

Is there room in a classroom setting for students to go into freeform work, to let the work become whatever the work wants to be? As apposed to saying, You need to learn how to do this. ?

I think definitely yes and no. (laughter) So in my projects I have gotten feedback from other instructors like, Wow, the students in your class are making really big stuff. Or Their work looks so loose. Which I take those as completements for sure because I want the the students to follow those loose parameters of the project but I really do want them to experiment with the material. And I think it’s amazing when I have a class with ten students and all ten projects look completely different. That’s when I have succeeded for sure.

How do you help students examine the way that their lives impact their art?

So I guess I try to model that in the classroom and also in my fulltime job as a technician and I think I maybe almost more successful in the technician role honestly because I am not the students’ professor. So they don’t have to listen to me or do anything I say  (laughter) so I feel like they take my advice more as like a cool uncle or something like that. I think I try to be vulnerable and open with myself and my insecurities and things like that, so I think modeling that for the students is helpful in showing them that, Hey, it’s okay to just be yourself  and make the kind of work you want to make. 

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

Contact

pjhargraves.com

Instagram: @patgraves