Glass Meet The Future Film Festival 2021

This performance-based work will highlight communal acts of creation and collective action involving hot glass and textile-inspired processes. Approaching glass as thread, I will be working with my community to weave a luminous collaborative structure from strands of glass.
This unspoken film will document a story of social currency, communal effort, and interpersonal connection in the glass studio. During the second part of the ritualistic performance viewers will be invited to meditate on themes of loss and transformation.
My recent sculptural work involves this process of spinning strands of hot glass on top of geometric fabricated structures, until the structures are cocooned under thousands of luminous strands. These large-scale pieces are communal, performance-based works in which I ask members of my community to help me gather and spin the glass, building interwoven webs as the platform rotates. While much of my focus has been on the resulting objects, I am equally drawn to the beauty of the collaborative process and want to showcase it in a film. I have a physical disability that limits my ability to walk and stand. My disability has led me to explore alternative and experimental processes in the hotshop, including this spun glass technique. I value this process because it focuses on communal effort and collective action rather than physical strength, as members of community work together to weave an interconnected web.