ARTIST STATEMENT

In my work, I draw on my training as a glassblower to explore muscle memory, embodied cognition, and somatic knowing. I reference historical source material and draw inspiration from crafted objects. For me, a glass object’s material memory encapsulates a discrete moment in time. 

I take an experimental feminist approach to glass making in order to consider ways of breaking down hierarchy. I’m curious about changing the somatic experience of the hot shop by reconfiguring space, language, tools, and roles as a way to open space for new ideas and innovations. Formally, I explore nonhierarchical structures like rhizomes, crystals, webs, clusters and more that serve as starting points for glass forming. These reconfigurations provoke an expansion of the creative possibilities in the glass studio. 

These potentials are realized through imaging and photography, the techniques I use to track gestures of making.  My interest in glass and photography come together as my glass practice is iterated through the lens of the camera, allowing me to freeze, slow down, and layer time to examine how the body moves through space to create objects. I’m interested in how viewers’ expectations are disrupted as my body becomes an object maker, an image making device, and a performer.

Glass blowing, hot casting, coldworking, chronophotography, video, scanner photography, and collage are all tools for exploration. Likewise, critical writing, historical research, and a curatorial practice are modalities through which I explore these ideas. This interdisciplinary approach allows me to investigate the connections between the somatic experience of object making and performance, skill, imitation, and mechanization in a variety of formats.