Smash the ceiling, floor, and walls; take the broken shards and blow it back
Pittsburgh Glass Center
October 4, 2024 - January 10, 2025
collectors preview October 2, 6–8PM
5472 Penn Avenue,
Pittsburgh, PA
Smash the ceiling, floor, and walls; take the broken shards and blow it back critically analyzes the personal, professional, and political implications of heteronormative and patriarchal barriers through the creative work of femmes and gender non-conforming artists. By reframing the social issue through interactions: smashing, gathering, and blowing, this exhibition references some of the ways artists are actively processing their lived experiences. Smash the ceiling, floor, and walls; take the broken shards and blow it back considers how both national and international trailblazing artists across generations continue to boldly and unapologetically advocate for equality, freedom from violence and sexual harassment, professional recognition, bodily autonomy, sexual liberation, human health rights, and self-empowerment beyond every last real and imagined sheet of glass.
Curated by Alyssa Velazquez, this comprehensive exhibition will feature works by Sandra Bacchi, Dawn Bendick, Layo Bright, Scout Cartagena, Laura Hudspith, Michelle Young Lee, Aullar Mateo, Anna Mlasowsky, Audie Murray, Kathleen Mulcahy, Gracia Nash, Karen Donnellan and Suzanne Peck, Renata Petersen, Georgia Saxelby, Kristiina Uslar, and Ann Weathers.
Internal Circumstances
Solo exhibition, CIBC Square
Sept 10, 2024 - Jan 2025
Previewing Reception: Sept 10, 1 - 5pm
81 Bay Street, 7th floor gallery
Toronto, ON
Internal Circumstances is an exhibition of new works in stained glass and copper, that brings together the enduring knowledges and agential forces held within the more-than-human world and at our core.
The act of walking can be practised as a form of healing. Walking in the forest, through dark thickets where sounds are held close to the earth and vegetation which composes its architecture; spaces where soils are soft and rich with layers of growth and life-giving rot, where we too may shed layers of thoughts, feeling; places that teem beyond our ability to see, so dense and full that a person might feel inconsequential and full of potential in equal measure. These spaces are ideal for learning embodiment, for attuning to the self and to the world. Through these motions, we may emerge more calm, collected, and connected, and with a vantage that sees outside of ourselves more fully and compassionately.
Looking at the trails left by insects in the wood of fallen trees, patterns reflective of intuitive knowledge begin to emerge. For Hudspith, these appear as some kind of arcane and unknowable language, a scrolling of history and a poetry of movement that articulates a wisdom all its own. Just as walking rituals can carve pathways for healing, and offer encounters with the knowledge-powers within and without, archetypal figures too, like the maiden, mother, and crone offer insights for deepening self-knowledge and worldly connection. The ‘wild woman’ archetype embodies all these figures at once. She is wisdom, intuition, untameable. Her shape-shifting self unfurls, curious as the maiden; offers openly and protects the seeds of wisdom, as mother; and her wizened, milky, crone’s eyes read the texts written in the earth and those of our innermost being. Nurturing the wild woman within is a practice for healing and empowerment.
Enduring Emanations
Solo exhibition, Mrs.
May 3 - June 29, 2024
Reception: May 3rd, 4 - 6pm
60-19 56th Road
Maspeth, NY
Mrs. is pleased to present Enduring Emanations, a solo presentation of recent work by Canadian artist Laura Hudspith.
In this series titled “emanations,” Hudspith’s research and interests in medicine, biochemistry, in/organic matter, and geology converge. Using her body and its illness as source material, this series encourages introspection on a molecular scale to consider the potential and bounds of ontology.
Five circular stained-glass forms visualize and reference geological and biological bodies. fissure (Emanation V), depicted in fleshy pink tones, reveals a dramatic crack in the delicate glass bringing to mind a monumental crevasse or tectonic fault. At identical scale, wound (Emanation IV) formally mirrors fissure, seeming to link the macrocosm of earthly forms with the microcosm of teared bodily tissue; the interior world mimics that of the exterior. Each “emanation” acts as a porthole into both grand and molecular bodies – each alive with a dedicated macro/microbiome. Emerging from these two anchoring works, Hudspith intimately details colorful microanatomical illustrations of a breast and lymph node. One can easily find oneself lost in the intricate biological minutiae; strata (Emanation VI) encourages reorientation to consider the vastness of larger mineral bodies.
While each work is seemingly confined to the bounds of the bold circular soldering, they actively compliment and converse with one another through form. The artist’s use of material speaks to her examination of part to whole: small colorful and patterned panes are joined to create intimate scientific studies. Glass and the transformative process that its creation demands demonstrates the kinds of scientific possibilities that fascinate Hudspith. Together, the “emanations” propose the viewer to consider the boundaries of their own materiality in a world made up of matter.
"A historical and contemporary primer on stained glass"
Essay bu Angel Callander
May 29, 2023
“The history of stained glass is ancient and global. But given the conceptual demands of contemporary art, stained glass is a supple and compliant medium that can be imbued with almost any concern. What is most interesting about looking at these artists together is that, contrary to what one might expect, the more secular character of stained glass is largely sidestepped in favour of a slight bend towards spirituality and religiosity, often in critical, ironic, or unconventional terms. Materially, stained glass is combined with other quotidian or industrial elements, either in an effort to aggrandize the latter or situate the former as pragmatic and functional.”
Public Parking is a journal for storytelling, arguments, and discovery through tangential conversations. "A historical and contemporary primer on stained glass" was written by Toronto based writer and researcher, Angel Callander, with editorial support by Emily Doucet. Read Callander’s essay available here.
“Mutable Matters: A Conversation with Laura Hudspith”
Interview by Katie Lawson
March 15, 2023
Peripheral Review is an independent platform for documenting and expanding the emerging and under-represented Canadian art scene, as well as enabling access for emerging writers by encouraging accessible critical dialogue. Interviewer, Katie Lawson, is a curator and writer based in Toronto, Canada. Read our conversation “Mutable Matters: A Conversation with Laura Hudspith” here.