Date of Award
Spring 6-1-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Glass
First Advisor
Jocelyne Prince
Second Advisor
Rachel Berwick
Third Advisor
Denise Markonish
Abstract
Glass is an amorphous solid, existing in a liminal space, embodying indeterminacy. Its states of transformation from viscous flow to structural solidity carry the imprints of bodily influence. With the direct intention of using glass as a conduit to explore materiality, memory, and self-awareness, I construct a language of embodiment that arises through a series of performative encounters between my physicality and glass in the hot shop.
The mediating process I employ to create and arrive at the glass artwork I make is as necessary as its final form. Motivated by the desire to claim agency over my personal narrative, this written thesis is both a document of process and an examination of the impact of memories on identity formation.
As such, it integrates insights from writers like Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
This hands-on study explores the interplay between memory, perception, and selfhood in the ethos of process, thus elucidating the centrality of an embodied practice in the work. Moreover, I anticipate the thesis will catalyze a transformative shift in readers’ perspectives on memory, urging them to reassess and redefine their relationship with this fundamental aspect of human experience.
For the past four years, during transitional periods of waking and falling asleep, images recur involuntarily in the private space of my dreams. They arise as overlapping layers and textures, often connected to places I’ve known. The frequency with which they occur and the nature of the sensory details that animate their formations have led me to ponder their persistence. If memories are embedded in the body, what do they reveal? This recurring question has made its way into my work and provided the terms for an exploration—even interrogation—of these fragmented, hypnagogic impressions. I call them Blue Carpet Memories.
The concept of Blue Carpet Memories probes at repressed childhood memories, prompting critical questions about their authenticity and existence by exploring the blurred boundaries between what is real, fictional, imagined, and forgotten. I remember a blue carpet from my childhood that served as a witness to my lived experiences within the spaces I spent time in growing up. The color blue represents the initial hue of those involuntarily surfacing memories.
While the presentation of my process in this thesis seems to follow a chronological order, it has in fact been during studio experimentations that my understanding of the process evolves, revealing itself through cause and effect. Whereas I may first begin to perceive memories in the studio, I do not consciously bring them to the forefront of my mind and call them out as such until a later stage.
Accepting that the body plays an active role in delivering messages, I capture and encapsulate a sense of them through direct materialization. The studio work brings these memories to life, giving them tangible space outside myself. What begins as a process of excavation becomes a performative trace expressed through the medium of glass. It is necessary to engage in an archival excavation of the past to allow a return of the repressed and, ultimately, to liberate it. I let my intuition and physical engagement guide me as I connect with material and memory.
I compare the medium of glass to the human body as I consider both to be amorphous solids, based on my continuous, complex, and corporeal negotiations with this chosen material. I reckon with what surfaces—some unwanted, some seeking amends, some acting as clues or blueprints to a liberated self. Through collection, recollection, repetition, and casting, glassmaking immerses me in a state of physical or imaginative transience. Navigating between construction and deconstruction, fragments and wholes, decay and preservation, I traverse realms of introspection exploring themes of memory, home, and the body.
Recommended Citation
Ahli, Sara, "Unfurling Blue Carpet Memories" (2024). Masters Theses. 1244.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1244
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