Mediating Perceptions: The Spectacle Of Glass
Katherine Gray, Naked Camus [Single Egg], Glass, 10 x 10 x 76 cm. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
I began studying glassblowing for a very pragmatic reason: I wanted to design lighting fixtures and furniture and thought I should learn how to work with the material of glass. As an undergraduate student at OCAD University in Toronto (at the time known as the Ontario College of Art), I was also taking classes in woodworking, fabric design, industrial design, plastics, foundry and even jewelry. Soon, I abandoned everything else to commit to glass, because of how seductive and challenging I found it.
I don’t know when my fascination with glass began. I have very clear childhood memories of Pyrex: my mother’s set of nesting bowls with their pink-and-white cornflower pattern, my grandmother’s coffee percolator. Maybe that exposure made for a welcoming field, so that when I eventually was able to blow glass and learn arcane bits of glass history, those seeds of fascination found fertile soil and took root.
People often think of glass as a pristine, flawless material. For the maker using glass, there are often flaws: small bubbles, cords and other imperfections that indicate to the viewer that they are looking through a volume of material. How we ingest information or experiences is often influenced by something such as our background, upbringing or religious and political views: these are similarly invisible mediators that colour how we perceive the outside world.
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Katherine Gray, Forest Glass, 2009. Glass and mixed media, 160 x 76 x 305 cm. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
Ultimately, I created Forest Glass, three tall shelving structures, filled with over 2,000 drinking glasses, all mass-produced, all culled from vintage and thrift stores. The green and brown glasses were arranged to echo a tree and were surrounded by clear glasses. When the viewer stood back from the piece or squinted slightly, they could make out the tree shapes. Although I was given the latitude to be informed by anything in the Chrysler’s extensive collection of art and design work, it ended up being the photos I took in their glass collection that were the most inspiring. As in a lot of museums, the glasswork was protected by glass. I remember looking at photos where I couldn’t tell what I was actually trying to focus on, there were so many reflections of glass everywhere, all styles, eras and regions.
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Katherine Gray, As Clear As The Experience Redux (detail), 2019. Blown glass and steel, 91 x 41 x 152 cm. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
Examining the role of glass as a mediator still permeates my work. Touch screens on devices are made from glass, as are the fibre optic cables that undergird modern technology. As Clear As The Experience, another comment on the black screen, the portal to another world, in this instance is modelled on a greenhouse-style window. Filled with various production-style archetypical glass forms, the kinds of glass things that you would barely notice if they were in clear, colourless glass, take on a different aura when made in black glass. As Clear As The Experience comments on the belief that transparency and truth can triumph in the struggle against tyrannical dark forces. The blackness of the glass echoes obsidian, a crude and unrefined geological glass, mirroring the backsliding of our culture.
This article is an excerpt and is available in full in the Fall/Winter 2024-2025 issue of Studio Magazine.
