A growing coalition of heritage conservationists and cultural advocates is calling for the urgent call to declare the Pasig River a National Cultural Treasure (NCT). They cite the river’s irreplaceable historical, cultural, and ecological significance. The move comes amid renewed concerns over the Pasig River Expressway (PAREX), a controversial 19.37 kilometer, 6-lane expressway that critics […]
Jon and Hanna Pettyjohn: Bridging the Multigenerational Spirit of Artistry
Silverlens Manila debuted the first collaborative exhibit between the father-daughter duo of Jon and Hanna Pettyjohn, Reflections, in situ, on March 20. A stunning, contemplative exhibit that uses the material ceramics reality of the Pettyjohn workshop to delve deeper into their family’s collective artistic history, it experiments with both ceramic and painting methods to tell its tale.
To mark the occasion of their first exhibit, BluPrint interviewed the two artists, delving deeper into their individual practices as well as the process and inspiration behind the exhibition.
Jon Pettyjohn and Ceramic Arts
For Jon Pettyjohn, the interest in pottery started at a young age when his mom would collect small porcelain jars that “registered” in his mind. He went to Barcelona, Spain to learn about pottery traditions and materials, where he found himself drawn towards the Asian aesthetic, specifically the wabi-sabi philosophy from Japan.
This brought him to the Philippines in the 1970s, where he settled and started honing his craft, exhibiting his works in the country and eventually the Southeast Asian region. His interest in traditional crafts only grew from there, especially as he studied the local artistic traditions in Philippine indigenous culture even more.
“The ancient traditions that exist here of palayok-making and some of the ceremonial jars, the burial jars, these are incredible traditions,” Jon shared. “I mean, just to think that they go back thousands of years, right? […] And luckily, I’ve had the experience to go to the province and meet them and see how they work and hear their stories. It’s just invaluable. There are certain elements of their forms I’ve always tried to incorporate.”
Jon’s works tend to center itself around local traditions, balancing it with a sense of modernity that has always existed in the craft. Knowledgeable of the history in ceramics, he ensures that there’s a sense of continuity between the past and the present, incorporating both processes to create something unfamiliar and new.
“I see it as a continuity thing,” he said. “One thing about ceramic arts is we have the ability to see the works of people who worked thousands of years before us. You can go to whatever museum—the National Museum, for example, or the Palace Museum in Taiwan—and you can see things that were made thousands of years ago that look brand new. And you can draw a lot of inspiration from that; I mean, we feel a direct connection to that.
“It’s like it was passed generation to generation, and to be part of that chain is important.”
The Evolution of His Art
Jon Pettyjohn branched out from his philosophy in his younger days, which focused more on functionality, towards a more aesthetic direction where the ceramic’s existence isn’t necessarily for any specific purpose. He keeps an eye out for different ideas that he can incorporate towards his work. His foray towards non-functional ceramics has only grown since he started as he continues to explore more and more ideas on what pottery means as a whole.
He hasn’t necessarily branched out towards newer materials and technologies. For example, he still prefers using a wood kiln because of the natural glaze that comes out from the minerals in the wood. But Jon still understands the importance of progressing forward in one’s methodology over time, and the need to adapt to meet the present technologies and philosophies.
“The history of crafts always continually absorbs what’s [the] new available techniques and materials,” he said. “That’s important. If you try to keep anything [the same], anytime you talk about purity, or keeping something, the traditional art, like, pure, that’s a very deadly thing because then it dies. If it cannot evolve, it’s finished.”
Pottery and The Pettyjohn Influence
The Pettyjohn name has been an important fixture of the local Filipino ceramics art scene. Jon and his wife Tessy had been teaching and mentoring ceramics since the 1970s. He said that the two of them started as a way of fighting against stagnation of the craft in the country.
“Here in the Philippines, in the ‘70s, there were only about six workshops,” he said. “We hardly ever saw each other; we were really, really isolated. And I found that nothing was happening… I mean, people were interested in what we were doing, but we decided we had to teach. And although I didn’t really want to teach, I guess we saw that if we didn’t teach, we would stagnate, you know; we needed to create a community.
“When we began teaching, immediately the Pottery School drew in a lot of people.” he continued. “And for a time, it became sort of a center of activity… And I guess that would be the best thing, I think, that we accomplished: that there started to be a community. Now we’re already seeing a second, a third generation of young potters. Can’t even count them anymore. There are people who appear all the time that I don’t even know, but maybe they know my students [who] taught other students.”
Where Ceramics Goes From Here
These links to our modern-day ceramics art scene has allowed Jon to stay updated on where the craft has been going. He does not look at current trends with a judgmental mindset, but more curious as to how its evolution would happen and what it would look like in the future.
“This really seems to be a transition point and nobody’s really sure how these traditional arts and crafts will move into the future,” he said. “For example, high fire pottery, some people think we could be in the last generations of it. Who knows, right? Because of the cost of production materials [and] environmental issues.
“I think it’s important that it continues in one form or another, and that each generation has at least an understanding of what the previous generations were thinking about, [and] how they were using the material. But of course, the challenge is for every generation to add something new.”
Hanna Pettyjohn’s Eclectic Variety of Works
In comparison to her father’s focus on ceramics, Hanna Pettyjohn utilizes a broader and more eclectic series of mediums in her practice. She calls herself a “painter, primarily,” having studied the medium during her stay in UP Diliman. Even now, she would say that this is what she feels most comfortable using. And yet, she utilizes a diverse set of materials to bring the topics she’s interested in to life. She chooses them specifically for the way that it can reveal new insights in the topics that she’s interested in.
From paintings to porcelain, she capitalizes on the unique material conditions to highlight the aspects of her topics.
“I feel like a lot of artists now have the freedom to work with any material,” she explained. “I feel like I’m not constrained to one material. Maybe different mediums express different things. I guess it just depends on the concept of the exhibition or what I’m trying to say.”
Much of her topics take from having emigrated to Texas, where she is currently based and practices today. Her perspectives shift a lot as she worries about the practicalities of her art, as well as her placement in the scene as a whole.
“Logistics; I have to think of everything in terms of how I can bring it here and ship it here,” she said. “And, yeah, it’s different, it’s harder, the cost of production is higher. And then also being separate from what’s going on here. It makes me think about my identity more, like, how do I fit in here? Or do I fit in here? ‘What’s my identity?’ and finding my voice.”
The Migrant Experience
That anxiety and practicality features a lot in the works she creates. Her shows talk about well-worn postmodern topics like migration and the global diaspora, but with a distinctive flair that comes with her experimentation on mediums and processes.
A notable past exhibit is 2022’s Puting Lupa at Underground Gallery in Makati, where she uses porcelain materials to imagine a Philippines where the items used to make the material are easily accessible.
“I was sort of imagining a hypothetical scenario where it’s like you live in a place and you use the material and then you use that as like your [sources],” she explained.
“I was just trying to imagine if the source of porcelain is local also, and how meaningful it would be if everything could come from the area that you live on, and the land you live on provides for you. And then in particular, [if] there’s a Filipino porcelain that comes from just around, over there. Because I mean, it is nice that we can use materials from everywhere. But then, there’s [a] romantic [ideal], the idea of, you can use materials from the land you grew up on.”
The Fragmentation of the Self in a Globalized Society
It’s an interesting deconstruction of how art tends to be affected just as much by the economic realities of our world—to make porcelain art, one has to import raw materials from different places around the world. These ideas tie in together for her artwork in general, which comment on how migrants cope with existing away from their home in a new place.
“ I feel like what I’m interested in is exploring the connections that remain after a separation from a place, and how they’re maintained and transformed through the objects and images that we carry with us,” she said. “So a mundane item can sort of create a lot of feeling when it has a connection to a place or a person in time. And I feel like, especially with my earlier paintings, I was trying to do that. The fabric that I would paint were fabrics from home. And I was trying to bring that feeling to Texas.”
Much of her work floats around themes of the fragmentation of self as an important part of the migrant experience. Hanna Pettyjohn’s paintings depict daily life in a strange, dreamlike way, harkening back to rotoscope-esque styles that create a separation of the subject from the environment they’re in. It captures the feeling of a place, but also the isolation that exists from being a stranger in a strange land.
“ I feel like it ties into like the overarching intention to capture my experience of a place,” she said. “Or it’s like [a] big part of the action of the daily process of my art. For me, the way I look at it is [focused on] the parts in progress. The fragmentation is like the stages in progress or after completion. Or like, the early state as just a material.
“To me it’s the different stages of creating work, a reflection of the process… Maybe I take the different parts of the process and separate them. Sometimes I’ll take elements from the middle of the process and then that’s what I show. It’s like I’m dividing the process into different parts and separating it.”
Multigenerational Collaboration
In the growing and dynamic art scene of the Philippines, it’s hard to create something that’s unique enough to stand out. But Reflections, in situ creates a fascinating collection of works borne out of a melding of two mediums. Hanna said that the idea of a collaboration started when she would return home to the Pettyjohn workshop in Laguna and see the environment in a different light.
“I was just so interested in the workshop and the ceramics that he leaves in the environment around the studio,” she said. “So I started taking lots of photos. I have thousands of photos of this whole [place], of the house and the studio and everything. And I started painting those photos. And then it just made sense to us, or to me, that if I found a way to collaborate, [that we would] use that imagery with his ceramics.”
The Pettyjohn workshop was a familiar environment for Hanna growing up. She shared that her dad would give her a corner of the workshop to play in while he worked, and that she knew not to touch his work items as her parents used the space for their practice.
Since her childhood, the workshop has changed significantly. For example, it has a new kiln that Jon built during the pandemic with spare bricks that he had in the area. And yet, Hanna’s new perspective allowed her to conceptualize an exhibit that centers around dealing with the materiality of this familiar place she grew up with.
From there, the two of them would have discussions about a possible installation that depicted “the scenes of the detritus on the new forms.” Jon credited his daughter for the idea of combining their two mediums together.
“That kind of blew my mind,” he said. “I mean, that’s really a funny idea. I thought about it then, I really was having a hard time imagining it. Slowly it came together; we had some discussions about what kind of forms to paint on.”
Introducing ‘Reflections, in situ’
Reflections, in situ features a mix of paintings, pottery, and other ceramic artworks. The pottery and ceramics contain painted images of different materials found around the Pettyjohn workshop: bricks, wood, broken materials, works-in-progress, and other items around the area.
Multiple oil paintings by Hanna of different items seen around the workshop were also added in the exhibition. There’s an ephemeral quality to the paintings that allow them to feel both fantastical and grounded. It looks like it exists in a halfway dreamlike state, these items floating in a background environment of stone and trees, threatening to fade away.
An Artistic Agreement
Much negotiation happened over the ceramic works in the exhibit, from the forms that Jon would create to the actual process of painting itself. Hanna, for example, wanted traditional ceramic forms over more sculptural works that could be made for the installation.
“Because I wanted to refer to the work that I see around [the workshop],” she explained.
More than that, she wanted to paint these ceramic items with their glaze running over the paintings. This touch feels uniquely hers, as it feels like it fragments the process of ceramics-making, putting the audience midprocess as the works are created. The runny glaze was something that she fought to include in the final product, an aesthetic choice that she felt added to the detritus she was trying to depict.
“I feel like, even though he did the glazing, I influenced that as well because he was hesitant to have the glazes run over the paintings. But that’s what I wanted,” she explained.
Oribe and Seeking Atypical Aesthetics
Jon found this aspect of the works interesting. He compared it to the Japanese tradition of oribe ware, which are richly-colored ceramic art used for tea ceremonies. This process eschews aesthetic perfection for the deformed shapes molded by the potter. Jon said that oribe ware would use a certain kind of glaze that would partly cover up the painting in the ceramic works.
“It’s kind of a strange thing,” he said. “Why would you cover the painting? Why would you put something over the painting? But it’s a traditional Japanese thing. It’s an aesthetic and it’s also interesting that within that tradition, innovation has always been the key issue. Every generation of potters that does that kind of work has always tried to extend it in a way, which means to say, painting things that weren’t painted before, using colors that weren’t used before, using forms that weren’t based before.
“So immediately when Hanna said that to me, it dawned on me that she wants to do something like that. And then it really struck me that [it] was a really interesting idea.”
The glazes running on the ceramic became a complicated problem to solve, largely to ensure that it doesn’t cover up too much of the paintings. He and his wife Tessy tried to find the right formulation that would allow people to still see the paintings while letting the glaze run down.
“[The process] helped me really get an idea and understand how the ceramic making process is so unpredictable,” Hanna shared. “Like with painting, I know what it’s gonna look like when it’s done, but with ceramics, you do something, and you have to wait till it gets fired, and you don’t know how it’s gonna look.”
“Glaze is glass: when it melts, it flows like water,” Jon added. “It’s tricky to anticipate how much it will run. I don’t want it to run completely over the whole thing so that you can’t see it. Tessy was very concerned that I might just obliterate the paintings. We tried to find a way. If you see the exhibit, you’ll see I tried to get the glazes to sort of embrace her painting. And I think we were lucky, for the most part. They came out pretty well.”
A Future Beyond the Beaten Path
In working together for Reflections, in situ, Jon expressed a deep admiration for his daughter’s instincts and skill, feeling like he was able to connect with her better in the process of creating this exhibit.
“We truly collaborated,” he said. “She would come over, [and] we would talk about [the] forms that I was making, which ones that she liked, which ones I liked, and then later on the glazes and things like that. So it’s a very satisfying thing, when you see your kids as adults, and it’s a great thing because you start to see them as people.
“Working as an artist or craftsman, working with your daughter in your field, that’s a very satisfying thing. I mean, that’s something that artists and craftsmen would dream about. Working with their children as equals, that’s a rare thing.”
As the both of them continue on with their individual artistic practices, they hope that the exhibit will encourage more artists to experiment with ceramics. More than that, they hope that it leads people to expand their ideas beyond their chosen medium, searching instead for a way of broadening what they want to say with new forms that build on their ideas.
“This was just an interesting idea,” Jon said. “I honestly can’t think of an exhibition like this one. I’ve never seen—you know, in ceramics we always say, ‘well, someone must have done this before.’ But honestly, I’m not sure. I’ve never seen a collaboration like this, especially [a] father [and] daughter working together like that. So I hope people will see the limitless possibilities of working with clay.”
“I think I like the idea that someone like me as a painter could find this connection,” Hanna added. “And it would be nice if other people could also just not have an attitude of ‘I’m not a ceramicist, so I’m not gonna try it.’ There’s a lot you can do. And that would be nice if people feel like they want to explore also.”
Photos by Kim Santos. Installation photos provided by Silverlens Manila.
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