Pittsburgh Residency

John Moran, Minhi England and I had a shared three week residency at Pittsburgh Glass Center this October. We were working on creating work for our up coming show at PGC which opens February 3rd! Check out PGC's website for more information https://www.pittsburghglasscenter.org/ on the upcoming show!

We started the residency with a few collaborative pieces and and REALLY well attended demo!

We wanted to mash up all three of our styles a few ways so the first piece we made was a moon skull with sunflowers. I see the collaboration as a play on the sun and the moon, day and night, the beginning and the end. A memento mori of sorts.

For the public demonstration we wanted to do the same idea, just in a different format so we did a flower exploding from a moon that is crashing into a skull.

I worked mostly on creating planets to add miniatures to for a larger installation. I am excited to get working on the miniatures on these!!

The other body of work I spent a lot of time on during the residency is a "collaboration" with my grandfather and his photography. My Grandpa was a very talented photographer and after his passing I went on a deep dive into his photography. There were so many photos I had never seen before and they were all very inspiring. I hope to pursue this further but for now I am was very inspired by a few photos he took of a row of doors on a public street somewhere.

My work over the past few years has delt a lot with nostalgia and transitions. This new direction in my work stemmed from a few pieces I did back in 2015. PGC paired up with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History for a show titled "Out of the archives, Into the Gallery". Each artist had the chance to look through CMNH's archive of ancient glass artifacts and then make work inspired by one piece. I chose a small medicine bottle from the Roman Empire (circa 3rd century AD) which had a face on either side. After researching this piece I learned that it was a Janus Bottle. According to Graeco-Roman mythology and culture, Janus was one of the oldest and most important divinities. He was the god of beginnings and transitions, and usually depicted with two faces, in order to look towards both the future and the past. He is often seen above door ways as they are a transition to what is Infront of and behind you. This all came rushing back to me when I was looking at this photo from my Grandpa. I am making a glass door "collage" and hope to include my grand father's photo somehow.

I hope you enjoyed this post and I am excite to finish this new work!!

Have a great week!!!!!