Rachel Donner
In modern society, most young people can no longer be represented by a woodfired mug in the classic country potter style. We need something with bling, charm, and fashion. With 21st-century trends ranging from silly Snapchat filters to vajazzling (look it up), pottery has had to step it up a notch to fit in this past decade. Brent Pafford delivers with his POPJCT series, mixing handmade porcelain vessels with ready-made materials like faux-crystal drawer-pulls, plasticky pastel epoxy, copper tubing, and fabulous resin-encapsulated glitter. Now this is the language of millennials!
POPJCT
/päpjekt/ (noun): An object, which by its materials and craft, is intended to critique or comment on contemporary culture.
In the most recent edition of Pafford’s POPJCT’s, the artist uses salt rocks as handles. He does this intending that as they are drank from, handled, and washed, the handles will slowly erode while drying out the skin of the user. A physical impression is left behind, referencing the use of the pot and perhaps of the conversations that were shared over a cup of tea.
Pafford describes his work as:
“Contemporary heirlooms: counterpoints to disposability, utilitarian objects imbued with touch and labor, time and energy.”
More than ever, there is tension between generations. Baby boomers bellyache nonstop about millennials while millennials try to find a place to belong in an increasingly volatile and polluted world. Surprisingly, Pafford’s pots help fill a tiny profound hole in today’s big problems. As we struggle to solidify our identities and make clear our politics, something borderline garish, conversation-inducing, and socially aware is just what we need to carry with us to our local, direct trade, house roasted, liberal coffee shop. POPJCT’s are perfect vehicles for conversation.
“At the intersection between generations things are lost: items lose their potency in daily life, and rarely are objects created, manufactured, or bought with the intention to spend a meaningful amount of time with them, care for them, and pass them along to younger generations.”
From Pafford’s Instagram post about salt-handle POPJCTs: “Access – who has it or doesn’t and why – has been and will continue to be a conversation in our household. Advocacy and efficacy, equity vs equality, mental health, physical health, social barriers, identity, age, class, race, addiction, and other socio/economic factors weave the complex and complicated pattern of contemporary society. These particular POPJCT objects have salt rock handles – eroding and drying out the hand of the user with each touch, leaving a physical impression of the conversation shared – perhaps as a reminder to always check your own perspective.”
Follow Brent Pafford on Instagram here!
