G L O S S A R Y 

Solipsistic Terms

Absurd: ridiculous.                                                                 

Act: to do, not to be confused with acting. 

Adornment: the act of wearing things on the body to decorate it. The most common form becomes jewelry, which is a foundation of a large body of work. Additionally I have a design line, which explores adornment in the everyday.

Alchemy: Ancient practice trying to understand the different elements of the world and invent a new understanding.

Archive: library of information and or objects that tell a story.

Ash: the remains of a being after cremation

Between: Nether zone, at, into, or across the space separating two beings, places, words, in the period separating two points of time.

Binary: a whole composed of two.

Boundaries: the things that divide the world and delineate where one person ends and another begins. Sometimes they are geographic, political, and physical. The spot where one thing ends, and another begins.

Cameo: historical reductive process of engraving that was initially created with shells. Glass was employed to emulate that look, often depicts a loved one or historical figure.

Cartography: the study and practice of drawing maps.

Cathartic: the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art.

Chain: the things that bind us to other people and that adorn our bodies.

Chart: another manner of graphically representing data, and are often used to ease understanding of large quantities of data.

Chimera: a single being with two different genetic identities. Scientists have created an animal called a "Gleep" or half goat half sheep. 

Collaboration: Working with other people to achieve shared goals. My longest lasting collaborations are with family, roommates and blow partners (those you blow glass with.) Some of my most influential collaborators are my sister Grace, Kim Harty, Rika Hawes, Suzanne Peck and Brett Day Windham.

Collection: accumulation of objects gathered for study, comparison, exhibition, or as a hobby.

Connect: the reason I make art.

Consequence: the effect, result or outcome of occurrences both physical and emotional.

Craft: not a four letter word. (Quote from Cheryl white) The history of craft and traditions of making with your hands and those techniques being passed down through apprenticeship; strongly influences the way that I make.

Decorative: the adornment of objects for the sole purpose of making them more beautiful, often but not always at the expense of functionality.

Delineate: Indicates exact position of border or boundary.

Desire: a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.

Dream: the time when you organize your thoughts from the day, memories, and imagination.

Duality: the quality or character of embodying two things at once.

Earnest: a genuine interest and desire to be understood.

Emotion: instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge.

Excavate: to unearth, removing material to find what’s underneath. Relates to the process of cameo engraving, in which the portrait or image is revealed through carving.

Experiment: to do something without an expected outcome. 

Exploration: to venture in areas unknown.

Facebook: system of social networking, which exists on the Internet and is modern day prosthesis of connection for people around the world.

Failure: something that I court in the work. It is my belief that practice which lacks failure lacks depth.

Family: the people and bloodlines we are bound to and inform who we are as a person.

Fragility: glass. Something that is breakable, for this reason can often embody concepts and ideas that talk about vulnerability and delicacy.

Friendship: a mutual affection between people. There is no practical limit to friendship and I am interested in the different ways people are connected to one another.

Futility: the thing that I push against, although I know that some artistic practices are fruitless, I often pursue them with a true earnestness and desire.

Glass: a crystalline material that can be both solid and liquid, depending on temperature changes. It is not regularly ordered on a molecular level, which explains why glass is so strange. 

Glassblowing: a team sport whose opponent is molten glass. 

Healer: to restore health, well-being or balance.

Heartbeat: the banging in the chest that happens when you see a loved one.

History: the objects, people, and events that came before, which I look back to and reference in my work. Always looking for historical reasoning and relevance for why I use glass and often I will deliberately play off of traditions. The study of the past, particularly how it relates to humans.

Home: changes throughout your life; begins with the place you were born and raised and can evolve. In nature animals return by instinct to a territory after leaving it.

Humors: dated term for disease or illness, such as hysteria.

Identity: a person’s conception and expression of their own (self-identity) and others.

Idiom: an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression--separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is comprised of. 

Illusion: a trick of the eye that makes you perceive one thing, when in actuality another thing is happening. Primarily in my practice I am interested in stereoscopes, zoetrope, and lenticular imagery.

Impression: the physical residue or pressure of another body against your own.

Infrathin: Marcel Duchamp's term for the immeasurable space between.

Intimacy: being close to someone. Closeness of observation, a knowledge of subject or person.

Investigation: a searching inquiry for ascertaining facts; detailed of careful examination. 

Lenticular: an optical illusion achieved when two different images are spliced together at 45 degree angles, so that each image is revealed separately from opposing viewpoints (ex. Left and right, up and down).

Liminal: on the edge of perception. 

Literal: taking actions or words at face value; understanding without metaphor, often ending up in an absurd place as a result: Creating a construct and following it to its illogical conclusion.

Love: a variety of emotions, feelings, and affections that can express interpersonal relationships.

Mapping: graphic representation of landscape; can be physical, geographic, or emotional.

Medical: the science, research and treatment of the body against illness, also focused on healing. A field that has used glass for over two thousand years.

Medicine: the art or science of restoring or preserving health or due physical condition, as by means of drugs, surgical operations, appliances or manipulations. 

Membrane: a pliable sheet like outer structure that acts as a boundary, lining, or partition in an organism.

Memory: accumulation of events in ones life that define them.

Mourning jewelry: jewelry created to memorialize someone’s passing, honors ones life, highly fashionable during the Victorian era, often including personal effects from the deceased such as hair and bones.

Network: physical and virtual connections or groups of systems connected together.

Nether zone: undefined space, only understood by what is on either side of it.

Optics: the behavior of visible, ultraviolet and infrared light, in my work specifically the behavior of light through, around, and in glass. I often explore optical devices in my work.

Participant: one that is actively engaging with an artwork, performance, or happening.

Participatory: art that encourages someone to actively engage.

Pending: awaiting decision, in reference to Facebook a friend request that has been sent out but not yet responded to.

Performance: glassblowing is innately performative, for that reason much of my practice has embodied performative qualities. I have a background in dance and theater, and those tendencies have become a manner through which I express ideas.

Personal: of or pertaining to one person and their ideas, belongings, beliefs and memories.

Perspective: point of view which can change quickly in regards to where you are standing physically, intellectually, emotionally.

Physicality: being placed in this particular bag of water, which is your body. The sense of self, including the ways in which a body moves throughout space and interacts with other bodies.

Portrait: something made in someone’s likeness.

Proprioception: the sense of feeling our bodies as our own property, the sixth sense. 

Proxemics: the interrelated observations and theories of man's use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture.

Questions: what I’m trying to answer through my work—the linguistic expression used to search for an answer.

Relationship: the other reason I make art. The thing I strive to articulate through my art practice.

Resistance: opposite of indulgence. 

S

Science: systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.

Self: the body and mind that are mine. 

Sincere: Me. What I return to in practice. Everything is a sincere attempt, and an endeavor to connect in different ways.

Skin: largest organ in our body, our barrier to the world—keeps our organs inside and protects.

Social media: an omnipresent resource and how we communicate in this modern time. A group of Internet-based applications that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content.

Space: areas that are engaged through composition, anywhere that things and people are not.

Stereoscope: optical device dating to 1838, in which two photographs of the same thing are taken at slightly different angles, and viewed together through this device which creates an illusion of depth and three dimensionality.

Stubborn: they say it is an act of insanity to do the same thing twice and expect different results. I usually try it again. 

Taxonomy: organization of things in specific groups; often the groups can be very personal, the creating of your own logic for systems of categorization.

Teratology: the branch of science concerned with the production, development, anatomy and classification of malformed humans. 

Tradition: an artistic or literary method or style established by an artist, writer, or movement, and subsequently followed by others.

Transmutation: the alchemical procedure of conversing base metals into metals of greater value. 

Transformative: Like an alchemist changing one thing into another, this concerns both ideas and materials.

Therapy: my art. The working out of different relationships, ideas and emotions. I often invite others to participate and engage in this nontraditional approach to art therapy.

Threshold: the nether zone between interior and exterior 

Twin: two things or people that embody the same genetic identity, so that they are corresponding matching beings.

Uncanny: the opposite of what is familiar; a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar that is experienced as peculiar.

Universal: of or pertaining to the collective identity, consciousness, and thoughts.

Threshold: the nether zone between interior and exterior.

Transformative: like an alchemist changing one thing into another, this concerns both ideas and materials.

Twin: two things or people that embody the same genetic identity, so that they are corresponding matching beings.

Wearable: things that can be put on the body and can protect it. Something designed and constructed with the sole purpose of putting on the body.

Web: the way we connect with people and a physical representation of connectivity, examples include spider webs and worldwide webs.

Weight: physical mass that grounds us and pulls us towards the earth.

Wunderkammer: predating museums, a cabinet of curiosities in which people of means would exhibit a collection of rarities and strange and wonderful objects.