A Grief Observed
(kiln-formed glass) 17" by 17" by 1"
About the piece....
My interest in the experience of being human is explored through the depiction of human figures. The figures are an expression, an abstraction even, of ideas and emotions. The surrounding background represents the complexity of our inner lives and our attempts to be connected to others.
A Grief Observed is born of the experience of collective isolation experienced after the death of a dear friend.
About the struggle....
I have been thinking a lot about the work that I am doing in this line. Are the pieces just reproductions of charcoal sketches in glass, or are they more? This one came from what I was living as I was trying to reconnect with the world after watching my friend die. But most people, seeing this, will not see what I lived, or what I am communicating in the piece.
If it speaks to them, does that matter? Do they need to know that the red lines are about connections to other people, are about pathways, neural pathways, pathways on computer chips, the ways that make our lives what they are? Do they need to know about the texture beneath the surface of the glass? Dark and mysterious, I hope it pulls the viewer in, to wonder at the texture on the flat glass, to wonder at the valleys, heights and rivers, and perhaps to see it as metaphor for all that we experience, a symbol of our hidden inner lives.
Maybe it's enough for them to think of it as pretty.
About the piece....
My interest in the experience of being human is explored through the depiction of human figures. The figures are an expression, an abstraction even, of ideas and emotions. The surrounding background represents the complexity of our inner lives and our attempts to be connected to others.
A Grief Observed is born of the experience of collective isolation experienced after the death of a dear friend.
About the struggle....
I have been thinking a lot about the work that I am doing in this line. Are the pieces just reproductions of charcoal sketches in glass, or are they more? This one came from what I was living as I was trying to reconnect with the world after watching my friend die. But most people, seeing this, will not see what I lived, or what I am communicating in the piece.If it speaks to them, does that matter? Do they need to know that the red lines are about connections to other people, are about pathways, neural pathways, pathways on computer chips, the ways that make our lives what they are? Do they need to know about the texture beneath the surface of the glass? Dark and mysterious, I hope it pulls the viewer in, to wonder at the texture on the flat glass, to wonder at the valleys, heights and rivers, and perhaps to see it as metaphor for all that we experience, a symbol of our hidden inner lives.
Maybe it's enough for them to think of it as pretty.
posted by Barbara Muth at 6:49 PM
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