Contemporary glassmaking is an inherently dislocated practice. To work with glass is to associate oneself with a tradition divorced from the functional needs that it was created to satisfy. In so doing, practitioners voluntarily subject themselves to a sense of alienation. Artists navigate the displacement of their craft in contemporary practice with processes that embrace unorthodox methodologies. The resulting work employs mechanisms of reconfiguration, disembodiment, and subversive misappropriation. Tradition and reverence for material is balanced by approaches that are hybrid, other, and preternatural. These mutations function as microcosms of the discontinuity of our social fabric—oscillating between the familiar and alien.
