Tears of Joy and Sorrow, 2017
Hand-blown borosilicate glass, conduit and nylon line, 96 x 108 x 72". Installed at Eotechnic Sensorium, Century House, Rosendale, NY, 2017.
This installation represents my tears, everyone’s tears--each individual and personal. Like the smile or the laugh, tears are universal, an expression of deep, often unspeakable, overflowing emotions. Though merely tiny drops of water, tears can sway a multitude. Tears can be cathartic, depleting, thrilling or isolating. As R.L. Fishers writes, “It’s as though each one of our tears carries a microcosm of the collective human experience, like one drop of an ocean.” This thought encapsulated the 2017 installation at Century House Historical Society. For this installation, and for future ones, the work needs to be over water. The site was obvious from the moment I first came upon it: Tears dropping into water, returning to their calm source.
This installation presents my return to 3D art after devoting my practice to Tears of Sorrow. For this project, I adopted an entirely new to a new medium, glass: the only material that could adequately convey the range of feelings in near identical shapes. It was both scary and exciting to explore a new technique, using borosilicate glass and a gas flame that exceeds 2000 degrees. Each tear is similarly shaped, yet unique. I spent hours upon hours fabricating the tears at Urban Glass in Brooklyn under the guidance of the gifted Amy Lemaire.