Centering Care
in
Glass History:
2022 Rakow Grant for Glass Research
Supported Project
The Glow Up analyzes, honors and uplifts the vital connective work women undertook to help each other and their community grow in the formative years of studio glass. Women transformed the landscape of the medium, ensured its very survival by tending to the practical needs of the glass family, thereby clearing paths from its DIY, experimental roots to the sophisticated and professionalized place it holds in the world of contemporary culture today. The creation of networks of care is an art form, belonging to a different category than that of artists championing their own material triumphs. It is a radical, queer and feminist way of creating and surviving in a world of antagonisms. The sharing of resources and information, the shaping of pedagogy, the feats of nurturing, organization, administration, patronage and advocacy that built the studios, craft schools and academic programs that comprise the world of studio glass deserve the critical analysis that this field has already lavished on the question of first furnaces, first bubbles and first blobs.
Click here to read the full thesis.
The subjective truths of primary sources combined with archival research to presents an illuminating work aimed at an expansive audience. These histories reveal where and how techniques were shared, who reached across barriers, and how women brought awareness of 1970s feminist movement into the hot shop, making room for alternative practices that pushed back against 2,000 years of male-dominated glassmaking. This study sweeps away the surface layers of glass history to reveal the fertile soil of connectivity that supports and enriches the glass community to this day. It honors the understanding that no one achieves in a vacuum, and the entire community benefits when artists support one another. Normalizing and celebrating collaboration and care is a needed step towards dismantling remaining cultures of toxic individualism in the field of glass art.
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