2022
Processing Ash (In progress)
This video is an unfolding story of material mobility that overlays narratives of present and past. It documents the process of making glass as a way to create a signature of specific locations and wildfire events in north-central Colorado. Each glass sample was created from sand and ash residue collected from different locations that had been affected by wildfire. The recipe itself is an adaptation of “forest glass”—a late medieval European glass made of sand and wood ash. The video toggles between two parallel narratives atop the video of glassmaking. The first narrative catapults the viewer to the medieval ages through the beginnings of forest glass production and its larger implications over time as the glassmaking process intersects with trade, politics, and global expansion. Arching forward from the thousand-year material history, the second narrative recounts the personal narrative of seeing a place change due to increased wildfire. Despite the drastically different time scales and locations, are there links between the nearly thousand-year gap of the material narratives? Can a seemingly benign agent, such as a glass recipe, become an inadvertent catalyst, influencing centuries away from its own origins?
Exhibited in Co-creating with Nature, 2022 (20 Washington Place in Providence, Rhode Island), piece in group exhibition sponsored by Hyundai Motors Group as part of the RISD X Hyundai Research Collaborative.
With special thanks: RISD X Hyundai Research Collaborative, RISD Graduate Commons Grant, RISD CoWorks, RISD Nature Lab, Reid Cooper (Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University), Rakow Research Library at Corning Museum of Glass
This video is an unfolding story of material mobility that overlays narratives of present and past. It documents the process of making glass as a way to create a signature of specific locations and wildfire events in north-central Colorado. Each glass sample was created from sand and ash residue collected from different locations that had been affected by wildfire. The recipe itself is an adaptation of “forest glass”—a late medieval European glass made of sand and wood ash. The video toggles between two parallel narratives atop the video of glassmaking. The first narrative catapults the viewer to the medieval ages through the beginnings of forest glass production and its larger implications over time as the glassmaking process intersects with trade, politics, and global expansion. Arching forward from the thousand-year material history, the second narrative recounts the personal narrative of seeing a place change due to increased wildfire. Despite the drastically different time scales and locations, are there links between the nearly thousand-year gap of the material narratives? Can a seemingly benign agent, such as a glass recipe, become an inadvertent catalyst, influencing centuries away from its own origins?
Exhibited in Co-creating with Nature, 2022 (20 Washington Place in Providence, Rhode Island), piece in group exhibition sponsored by Hyundai Motors Group as part of the RISD X Hyundai Research Collaborative.
With special thanks: RISD X Hyundai Research Collaborative, RISD Graduate Commons Grant, RISD CoWorks, RISD Nature Lab, Reid Cooper (Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University), Rakow Research Library at Corning Museum of Glass