Glassblowing as Terraforming: Posthumanist Turns in Theories of Embodied Knowledge
September 25, 2024
6:00 pm
A Paul and Irene Hollister Lecture on Glass by Erin E. O’Connor (Marymount Manhattan College)

“The first silica mine that I visited had ‘pulled a shot’ that morning; they had dynamited a portion of the mountain, reducing half of the ridge before me to ten tons of rubble. The silica was largely destined for glassmaking factories serving the architecture and automotive industries. Yet, some silica would be shipped to glassmakers serving the contemporary Studio Glass art world.” —Erin E. O’Connor

In the mid-twentieth century, American artists turned to glass as a medium of expression, distinguishing themselves from factory glassworkers. Left out of this history—which is rich with artist biographies and aesthetic analyses of glass objects—is the material life of silica mines. In this lecture, Erin E. O’Connor connects the formation of glass objects to the ongoing formation of the earth, seeing them as two sides of one artistic process. Drawing from anthropological fieldwork at mines and a glassmaking facility in Appalachia to explore these intertwined yet unconnected realms, she aims to overcome a deep-seated dualism between human creativity and natural science that polarizes glassmaking (mixing ingredients) and glassblowing (making objects). In doing so, she addresses how the human experience of self-determination and creativity intersects with the living (and dying) ecological world.