Briana McCarthy

Navigating grief occurs privately and publicly, whether we want it to or not. There are societal expectations and traditions that put pressure on and pull the frayed edges of our personal grief. Enterprising individuals have built an industry around death. Funeral homes present a unique sales experience during which those positioned for profit pose as counselors to the freshly disoriented and shattered, offering structure and prepackaged comfort to the bereaved. We pull at our own threads, unraveling and reknitting our identities. I consciously guide myself back into vulnerable, painful states to complete artwork, the making of which is meant to soothe me. In Unit 3, I have been questioning why I am so tied to that cycle and if it is healthy. I wonder what it means to continue opening myself up to an audience through my art and how open I actually am. My working material has almost wholly shifted to glass, perhaps as a reprieve, as glass doesn’t demand the same constant emotional immersion that I need for other art processes. Through this reflection on my art practice, I’m seeking understanding more than change, though, gladly so, new knowledge rarely lies stagnant.

Death and grief are commodities which fuel an industry focused on body disposal, memorial, and perceived comfort: one that employs sales tactics targeted at vulnerable customers and can easily become predatory. In the book The American Way of Death: Revisited, author Jessica Mitford includes an excerpt from the National Funeral Service Journal:

“A funeral is not an occasion for a display of cheapness. It is, in fact, an opportunity for the display of a status symbol, which, by bolstering family pride, does much to assuage grief… It seems highly probable that the most satisfactory funeral service for the average family is one in which the cost has necessitated some degree of sacrifice. This permits the survivors to atone for any real or fancied neglect of the deceased prior to his death…” (2000, p. 20).

This excerpt reads as propaganda to soothe any guilt owned by those in the death industry. It gently encourages predatory behavior, situating the transaction as a form of comfort for the aggrieved. The party that is in a position for financial gain is positioned as a guide and counselor. Mitford responds, “... Funeral transaction is generally influenced by a combination of circumstances which bear upon the buyer as in no other type of business dealing: The disorientation caused by bereavement, the lack of standards by which to judge the value of the commodity offered by the seller, the need to make an on the spot decision, general ignorance of the law as it affects disposal of the dead,” (2000, pp. 20-21). Planning my mother’s funeral, I was discomfited by the business transaction. Losing my mother only a day prior, I was now faced with a barrage of decisions for an event that was for other people. The choices laid before us were generic and costly. We kept things simple: no visitation, no showing so no casket, cremation, a simple wood box urn, an obituary, a service, printed programs, snacks. The price tag still came to around $3,000. Financially, we were in a place to make the decisions we pleased, though the simplicity of our family ascetic made it so. What of those that couldn’t even afford the basics? Everything costs, even down to the transport from the funeral home to the crematorium and back. The choices for those less financially flexible seems to be shame or spending beyond their means, both catalysts for future suffering. The shame structure built around grief, which I spoke to in some depth in Unit 2, is constructed of societal expectation and supported by the funeral business. People and their pain become commodities and opportunities. The industry takes advantage of vulnerable people then celebrates itself as an entity of compassion.

Mitford, J. (2000) The american way of death revisited. Rev. edn. London: Virago Press.

Stevens, S. T. (1991) ‘ Charon’s obol and other coins in ancient funerary practice’, Phoenix, 45(3), pp. 215–229. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/1088792

These last few years, my art practice has been intensely focused on the loss of my mother. It has been greatly cathartic, but also difficult and tumultuous. Certainly, my grief experience is a fairly typical one, in that it is unpredictable and full of highs and lows, but I’m also actively revisiting my trauma and emotional tumult often and purposefully. I, at times, feel as though I’m not allowing the grief to take a natural course: the art serves to exorcise the grief, but I repeatedly call it back to myself in the name of making art. I have wondered if I am doing myself harm by prolonging the difficult emotions, though, this isn’t a new process. Outside of art, I run things in circles, so making art may shorten the cycle: I still feel mad at times. Subconsciously, the madness from repeatedly reanimating settled emotions may have influenced my heavy lean into glass as a material. A glass piece doesn’t require the continued emotional labour that other mediums ask of me. It’s designed and planned in a concentrated burst at the start, then it’s all construction; in the long assembly process, I fall back into natural rhythms and don’t have to revisit specific emotional states to complete the work.

There is also the element of audience. In presenting such personal work, I am actively vulnerable wherever it is shown. I’ve consented to strangers picking through my guts, and there are days when I feel too fragile for their inquiry. That said, I choose to be vulnerable in the work and to pull back from those conversations would feel like a betrayal to the work and my journey: when those conversations happen, the art is doing what it is meant to. Often, viewers share their grief. In these interactions, I’m not just an artist, but also a witness to the grief of others: I have a responsibility to listen because I started the conversation. This will always be more difficult some days than others, but being aware of the inevitability allows me to prepare. I’m still learning my boundaries and deciding which ones to kick through and which I still need.

In considering boundaries, I have to ask myself why I feel the need to open up such an intimate, confusing, and painful experience to the world. It is a need. If I kept everything to myself I think I would chase it in circles until I went mad, though, through a ritualistic art practice, I am often inflicting some of this madness on myself anyways. Maybe a change of mindset:  instead of pulling the feelings back to myself, it’s simply that I have the capacity to always generate more. Releasing my experiences and questions into the world, I gain some space for new things; at times that space will be filled with more grief, but the sharing allows my internal well to be open for joy and connection. It keeps the water moving, denying stagnancy. There is also power in speaking your own truth aloud: an ownership and shedding of shame.

There is a challenge and protectiveness in my sharing as well. When asked about her decision to be so open with very intimate details of her life, from her sex life to her health, Artist Lindsey Mendick responded, “I feel like the honesty is quite protective,” (Judah, 2022). No one can be surprised by my mess, or judge me for it, because I am aware of it. I announced it and so must be in control of it. I’m trying to convince myself and others. My common reaction to feeling vulnerable is to step right over those feelings as a show of strength. Brutal honesty is a reaction born of my own fear and feelings of being something broken and strange. I’m challenging society’s reaction, but also hoping no challenge is needed as I search for community. This protectiveness can be seen in many areas of my work.  Mourning Jewelry is a way to signal to others without saying the words, but also like a medal for suffering. Mourning Veil is like armour; it hides the face, obscuring the vision of the audience and the wearer, protecting both. The Toll pulls from Greek death and burial myths. While I’m working from my own experience with death as an industry, there is a layer of separation between myself and the audience through the use of widely understood symbolism and cultural narrative; I layer my story beneath another so the audience doesn’t have a direct route to me.

Judah, H. (2022) 'I burned all my relationships in the kiln': Lindsey Mendick's courageous, confessional ceramics. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/aug/11/lindsey-mendick-ceramics-new-show-women (Accessed: 10 October 2024).

In an interview with Exhibition Digest, stained glass artist Brian Clarke says, “There are certain things you can express through stained glass that you cannot even begin to express as a painter or as a sculptor. It’s a poetic world of experience,” (Black, 2023). Clarke is speaking to the more traditional use of stained glass for windows, but the statement is reflective of my own feelings when working with glass: glass is contradictory and poetic.

The poetry of glass lies within its contradictions and how it affects our views of and interactions with the world: it distorts, blocks, and allows our view, and it both reflects light and permits it to pass through. For me, glass is a physical entry point to a contemplative space, inspiring literal poetry. In Unit 3, I’ve written much more poetry that isn’t linked tightly to any specific work, but was born from the introspective process of working the glass: repetitive construction versus active manipulation of material, allowing the mind to wander. Outside of the literary form of a poem, there is visual poetry in glass. Beyond the already touched upon characteristics, I am fascinated by the light and shadow at play when mixing types of glass in a work and from the soldered seams that hold the glass pieces together. With the right light, the work can expand beyond its physical form and meld with the environment in which it is displayed. This presents opportunities to push my work in a way that enfolds the viewer into that interaction as well. Artist Lindsey Mendick has said, “We all talk about art being immersive, but stained glass truly is. You are bathed in the whole image, and you become part of it as the light shines through,” (Black, 2023). Much of my work may be considered small at present, but I am interested in using light and shadow to expand the work and more fully immerse the viewer.

Glass presents in a variety of ways: translucent, opaque, textured, smooth, colorful, clear, providing a faithful view or a distorted one. Glass pulls in the heat or the cold of its environment. It’s a barrier and a way to see in; strong, yet fragile, protective, but may cut. We place photos, as memories, behind glass, a barrier to keep them safe. The poetry in such contradictions begs for metaphor: in my work, that metaphor is memory. Our memories are influenced by our environment and experience: current and past. We remember through the lens of who we are now; truth becomes individual and mercurial. Just as glass acts as a barrier, we are separated from the moments as they happened and rely on our memories of them. Some present clear and whole, while others are distorted and fuzzy. We may only be able to recall a sensation or an emotion. Our brain wants to make memories whole, so it will fill in the gaps, piecing memories together in the same way I assemble pieces of glass. 

Like memory, glass appears deceptively strong. We trust our memories as fact, but, while they certainly are a kind of truth, they don’t fully represent a person or experience. They are changeable and time and disease can rip them from you. My glass works have weight. They feel robust and the metal seams connecting the individual glass pieces speak to fusing and strength, but all are fragile; the connecting solder is soft and can be bent and the glass itself could be shattered. The robust weight could actually be the undoing of a work. What’s Left of You is a 4.3 meter chain, built of links of varying structure. If hung, it couldn’t support its own weight and would pull itself apart. The individual links are in varying states of “completeness”, some 3 dimensional in design while others lie flat. This harkens to the fluctuating vibrancy of our memories and our brains’ attempts to fill in the gaps.

Glass is also used in relation to memorials. Stained glass windows are found in churches, sometimes funded by families in memory of  a loved one. My mother was the catalyst of my interest in glass*. She was going to teach me how to work with stained glass but never got to. Working with glass is a way to feel close to my mother. The making of all my glass works serves as a memorial to my mother: action as memorial, the resulting works becoming artifacts, evidence, of the act.

I am very particular about the glass choices in my work. While choosing and arranging glass for each piece, I consider color, transparency, and texture and how those elements might speak to my themes. In the Mourning Jewelry pieces, I was focused on the cycles and characteristics of memory and decomposition.

In both Snake and Roots, the journey starts at the end. I find memories of my mother often start at her death, blooming backward into her life. This path is not a conscious choice, but an instinctual kindness where I am allowed to experience the birth of her in my life again. I do not have to lose her every time I think of her.

*Read more in Studio Diary: Unrealized Plans and Action As Memorial

Black, H.E.J. (2023) Ruling glass. Available at: https://www.worldofinteriors.com/story/contemporary-artists-stained-glass (Accessed: 10 October 2024).