Briana McCarthy

June 9, 2024 - Struggles with Chain Construction

After spending all of Saturday becoming very frustrated with the glass chain, having things not fit right, having a hard time getting things constructed, and finding that construction to take close to 2 hours per chain link, I started to rework how to present the chain.

Now the links will have the same basic look but some will be flat. Some will be with more structure but hollow. This will allow me to make many links instead of only a couple so I can actually have the effect of a long and coiling chain.

Even as I work with constructing some of the more complex chain links, I start to grab the wrong pieces for a section or turn it the wrong direction, creating these kind of lumpy edged links. I'm starting to think about how that actually relates to how our brain remembers things and puts together information, adding things that were never there, filling in areas where we're missing information with what seems to make sense. Also this idea of healing from trauma and just trying to put yourself back together in any way that sticks, even if it looks a bit of a mess.

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August 1, 2024 - Glass Tool Quality

Not having access to a glass grinder for my stained glass, for shaping the small fiddly pieces, and the challenge of working with the cheapest soldering iron, with no temperature control, has forced me to accept imperfection. I think this has made the work better. Grief and memory are not pristine refined things. Human bodies aren't either. I am trying to balance imperfection with my own growth as I become more skilled with the materials and processes. 

Recently, I have upgraded soldering irons with the hope of increasing efficiency and strength. Stained glass processes are time consuming, so hopefully this new tool will help me work faster and lay down a more even bead of solder, with the heat control element that is now available to me

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August 11, 2024 - Research Without Outside Context

I've been thinking about the question of art research and art as research. I've been told I need to look at more artists, but that is not where I draw inspiration or really have interest in terms of my own work. I'm sure I pull something here or there, and maybe subconsciously, but not enough for it to be a core element of my research. I may also be taking the feedback too literally. Even stepping away from theme and looking at other artists from a material or display standpoint, I struggle to connect their experience to my own work. 

My inspiration, my work, flows from the investigation of myself. It comes from a very personal, very intimate space. I strive to understand myself without being polluted by others’ opinions of me and what I'm experiencing. I don't want to invalidate their experiences, but they don't always need to reflect on mine. I'm treading that line of understanding that I am a singular being in my experience and mind but also that other people experience things in the same vein and that there will be connections. It’s interesting because I also want there to be connections.

I feel a bit that in this push toward art as research, we are told to look at non-traditional research methods, move beyond books and journals, but yet my research of the self, my internal deep dive feels a bit invalidated as a proper form of research by the necessity of outside sources. The question becomes “how do I present my personal, introspective research in a way that is considered fully valid and is it even possible to do so within the constructs of an institution where there is a grading structure”? 

I believe isolated self reflection, where isolation means focusing on one’s own experience without outside context to support the truth of it, is a valid form of research. Especially in art where we are looking for those individual experiences in order to find connection. I suppose, for me, the outside contexts come after, wherein I discover others of like mind or sources that expand my own experience and lend to my growth as a person and artist. Certainly, I need to spend time with myself before bringing in outside sources, otherwise I experience a type of existential confusion where my thoughts feel polluted and not my own.

I’m really considering the stages of research and what each of them may mean and what each of them may look like. I do not search for isolation or a sense of specialness through my introspective research; I seek truth and understanding of myself without outside distraction until I am ready to evolve. I need to get through this stage in order to find and accept the connections that lead to the next.

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September 3, 2024 - When Does Work Feel the Most Like It’s Mine?

Speaking on glass blowing, artist Josiah McElheny says, ”The problem is, is you can’t touch it. If you could touch it, it would be very, relatively, easy to do, so you have to manipulate it in other ways. There’s this visceral thing that you actually haven’t touched it, so once it cools off, you know, overnight or something, I often have the feeling, of like, even though I recognize that I made it, I don’t really believe it until I, you know, take it out and handle it for a few days maybe, and then I start to go, “okay. Yeah. Maybe I made that.”

I have the opposite experience. I handle the materials throughout and feel most connected during the making; somewhere from when something starts to take form to when it is finished. Once a piece is made, time starts to build a separation: I start to feel less like I made a thing and start to forget the toil and trouble of it, or remember it in a more abstract than visceral way. Maybe that is why I think of the works as artifacts, the real experience is in the action and the process for me.

Art21 (2024) Josiah McElheny in “memory” - season 3 | “art in the twenty-first century". Available at: https://youtu.be/HQdcU9Rj9tw?si=ckDlFubJWZ_E-ztc (Accessed: 3 September 2024).

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October 17, 2024 - Unrealized Plans and Action As Memorial

My mother worked with stained glass before I was born. Our front door at a large panel she had made. It was replaced with clear glass some time in my childhood. Again, my memory is murky here. I know there were at least 3 different front doors, but I can only start to recall the first and the last. I can’t clearly picture the stained glass panel. I know it was nature based, with browns and greens. There was a tree or a log or a stump. There may have been a river.

It wasn’t until adulthood that I asked her to teach me. She agreed, but there was, seemingly, never time. She was dedicated to her job and hobbies and I was a young woman testing her independence out in the world. It was many years of bringing it up occasionally, then she retired. There was suddenly time and we decided that in the spring,a few months away, when we could work outside, she would teach me how to work with stained glass. A month later, a few weeks until Spring, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Stained glass became rather unimportant. Words became a struggle. Order of operations became a struggle. Memory became a struggle. We never spoke of stained glass or attempted it.

After her death, unfinished plans became haunting and I felt the need to complete things. The action of working in stained glass has become a memorial in itself. There is pain and comfort in knowing that, if she were living, she would likely have picked it up again when I did. For me, action as memorial feels more alive and connecting than a plaque or stone. Maybe it’s feeling the movement of my own body and the working of my own mind that puts life into the memory of her: the physicality of my own living body helping the memory come easier of strong hands, warm arms, and a curious mind.

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November 1, 2024 - Mourning Clothing

By the nineteenth century, black clothing for mourners, widows, had become greatly popular (Starling, 2023). Queen Victoria’s visible grief had the effect of making it more fashionable and a marker of class (Starling, 2023). As such, the etiquette was strict: dull black and a veil during the first year, an addition of black silk or jewelry then next, and a move toward grey, mauve, or lavender accents in the last 6 months (Starling, 2023). Abiding by this tradition was a choice, but I’m sure there was great societal pressure if you were among the practicing classes. What if you didn’t want to advertise your grief? A person in all black and a veil certainly draws attention. While some days it may have signaled that you need gentleness, other days it likely drew unwanted attention. Such dress would be a continued reminder to the aggrieved and society: no relief or escape for two years. If one did break tradition, were they ostracized and looked down on?

 Even today, though the trend of dressing in black for 2 years has fallen away, there is societal pressure to present a certain way: appear well, don’t speak ill of the dead, carry on as a useful member of society as soon as possible. Individuals are still pressured to move at the pace of society. In the past, throwing off society’s expectations may have cost you your reputation, but today it may cost you your livelihood.

Starling, H. (2023) The bleeding tree: a pathway through grief guided by forests, folk tales and the ritual year. London: Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.

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November 2, 2024 - Funeral Reflection

There were two rows of seating for immediate family. Arranged perpendicular to the greater audience, I could observe them, and they me. Already on edge, and only attending for the sake of my dad and sister, I breathed to calm the anger blooming in my chest: that fucking liar. 

I had two great concerns during the funeral planning: that my dad and sister got what they wanted and that I wouldn’t have to face or interact with the attendees. I didn’t want my grief to become a spectacle for others. I was vulnerable, processing the greatest loss I’d known; my instinct was to go to ground with my trusted few. I knew I would hate the funeral; squirming in the spotlight on my best days, there was no comfort for me there. I spoke my need plainly to the funeral director and was assured that family seating would not face the attendees and that there was a quiet place for the family to step away to, yet, there I was, staring into the crowd. I tucked myself into the furthest corner in the second row of seating: one quarter cover at best. I created my own cover by turning my back on the audience, focusing on my nephews. 

The service started. The audience was dutifully looking ahead. My eyes were dry. I felt hollow, detached, relieved: no one looked my way. I did look: mostly at my third cousin who was fiddling with his phone the whole time. Why attend?

As the service came to an end, we, the immediate family, were directed out of the chapel space. My anxiety startled back to full potency as we were led across the front of the space and through a side door. I stiffly, diligently stared forward, pretending I didn’t feel the eyes scrape across me. There was no time to hide. The audience was released no sooner than the last of us had passed through the door. Some followed us directly: hunting. I was just at the entrance of the family quiet space when I was first accosted. I knew the voice speaking my name. It was a safe voice and I turned into the arms of two close friends. Things got hairy after that. All the attendees were flowing in. It was emotional whiplash, being passed from a safe person to a practical stranger, repeatedly. People I hadn’t seen or spoken to since childhood needed to check me off their funeral bingo card. I felt trapped by their well meaning, attempted kindness…their sense of duty. Some were vampires, luxuriating in, feeding on the heightened emotion in the air and trying to convince me of their closeness with my mother, as if I should care. As if that made them important. 

Outside of my family, there were only five people I really wanted to converse with, whose hugs and words comforted instead of seeking comfort. I avoided the small lunch space, where the crowd eventually gathered. Where my sister and dad were hosting. I stayed in the chapel in a tight circle with my two oldest friends, protected from my surroundings: gone to ground.

I spent my mother’s funeral drowning in anxiety and responsibility. I had barely begun to process the loss and was now required to interact with people outside of my core support system. It felt like torture, all my fresh vulnerability and pain put on public display and poked at by near strangers. Funerals are not for those closest to the loss. Every grief journey being different, there are certainly people in that group who gain something from a funeral: those that are comforted by the gathering and the conversations within, but I am not one of them. The social hierarchy of a funeral positions the family as hosts and tragic guests of honor. Hosts and guests of honor have social responsibilities and the greater audience feels the pressure of etiquette to seek them out and offer comfort and, subconsciously, take some for themselves.  A funeral also serves as a societal marker: a point from which the aggrieved are meant to transition back into society and after which support can fall away. Funerals are a key point in the societally instituted grief timeline.

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November 4, 2024 - Shared Evolution: Creating Poetry in Tandem with Visual Art

Writing has always been an important part of my art practice, however, what was extensive, descriptive notes and list of keywords has evolved into poetry. My first poem within the MA painting course was in response trying to better tease out the narrative of The Veggie Cutter. I realize now that I was already trying to use poetry to access the spirit of the piece and put myself back in that space. I was also considering including it in the work somehow, but could never quite find a way that felt natural.

I continued writing in the same rhyming style for my second work, 8 Day Vigil: 9 years, 37 years, 70 years. This time the poetry was included in the work, as a type of spell to be used by the audience in the same way I was using it to access the work.

As I moved into Unit 2, the rhyming started to fall away. As it did, the work became less narratively locked in as well. The work became more poetic as I had another outlet to express myself and the full weight of communication was no longer on the visual art. The poems became looser and less manipulated; there was much more of a sense of brain to paper. They came faster and in higher quantities. I began to understand the making of the work as ritual, shifting the importance from result to process. 

The shift to working almost exclusively with glass in Unit 3 also saw the shift for my poetry from a device to access or support the artwork to its own practice. The work was feeding the poetry more than the poetry was feeding the work. This makes sense in hindsight because all the heavy thematic planning is concentrated at the beginning of the process with glass. The long construction that follows leaves space for meditation and for a mind to wander. I started keeping my poetry notebook next to me while I worked, sporadically stopping to jot down thoughts. I think I will always need both practices. They don’t always have to directly feed each other, but each is necessary so the other may breathe and expand. It’s a matter of weight dispersal and differing communication styles: sometimes it takes many languages to fully explain or understand a thing.

November 7, 2024 - Fragility and Practical Sturdiness

 In October 2024, I submitted two of the Mourning Jewelry pieces to a gallery’s open call. I live close enough that I was able to walk there to deliver the works in person. The line was long and there was a system of checking in, tagging the work,and whisking the work to the gallery space where it was being laid out for installation. Everyone was working quite quickly. As I unpacked the first piece I could see that the packing and transport had been enough to twist open a jump ring. Setting the piece on the table, I said to the gallery employee, “I need to repair this one quickly,” gesturing to the one I had unpacked, “Let me get this other one out for you, then I’ll step to the side to repair the first.” The employee nodded then picked up the broken work, the glass pendant dangling precariously and lopsided, and proceeded to walk away. I chased them around the table to retrieve the work. It was strange, but I attributed the interaction to the general chaos of the dropoff area causing miscommunication.

Sitting on the floor  near the wall, I completed the repair. When I placed the piece back on the drop off table, I made sure to tell the employee how to handle it to prevent damage. They half listened, turning their back on me before I could finish the short explanation. The other employee at the table gave me a sympathetic look before turning back to the task at hand.

 The lack of care in the encounter surprised me. I can’t be the first artist to present this gallery with a fragile work that needs to be handled thoughtfully. The machine was running to get all the work processed through, most of which was paintings with a smattering of pottery. My piece was being handled in the same way a small stretched canvas was and those doing the handling seemed unconcerned and unwilling to listen. I felt like a nuisance for needing time to repair and as my simple direction was disregarded. This experience has me considering if I should be making sturdier work, my mind running through scenarios and ways to build in fail safes for rough, or regular, handling. When I consider shipping my work for an exhibition, or that its installation may be in the hands of another, I become anxious. I also can’t ignore the uncanny similarities between my concerns for my work out in the world and my experiences with personal grief within society. Strength and fragility are themes in my work and my life. How much do I change or adapt to be safer in the world? How much do I ask the world to adapt and will it listen?

There is something that feels like betrayal that slithers through me when I consider changing my work to make it easier for others to handle. It speaks to my experiences in society after my mother’s death. It speaks to being given limited bereavement and expected to finish the messy bits of grieving, to regain control of oneself, within that time frame. It speaks to friends changing the subject as quickly as possible after they ask how you are doing. It speaks to an instinctual imperative to fit in and a learned one to not cause discomfort to others. Even before my mother’s death, I always felt a bit odd and out of place in society: emotions too big to contain, confusion at others’ ability to do so. Adding grief to that life experience greatly and quickly diminished my tolerance for a lack of consideration by society or from myself, directed at myself. The concentrated exploration of grief and identity through my art practice has reminded me that I am not devalued by my needs and neither is my artwork: I need to communicate those needs. 

How far should I go to reenforce my work for practical purposes? I’m aware that some of my work would not survive shipping or unpacking by strange hands. I think, as a working artist, I need as much of the work as I can manage to be able to survive those things, but I don’t want sturdiness at the expense of fragility. Fragility is too much a part of the works’ soul. I have certainly learned things about structure and material that can improve strength without betraying the work: stronger jump rings and smaller glass chain links holding weight better. I didn’t have a true sense of the weight of glass and the softness of soldered joints until What’s Left of You. The single layer, flat chain links are easily bent and can’t support much weight. When moving the chain, it can’t be forced or twisted, I have to gently, considerately guide it: I must be mindful. If I know the work can handle rougher handling, will I continue to be so gentle? I would hope so, but I’ve already had a moment where the mindfulness slipped, I became impatient, and broke a link. It was an easy repair, but it may not have been if I was unpacking the piece at a gallery. I think mindfulness is key. I think building out sturdier links for What’s Left of You would change the work too much. It needs the fragile links as much as it needs the sturdy ones to convey how the strength of memory fluctuates. Strong memories can cause us to feel fragile, less potent or whole memories may bolster us. Memory can be decimated by disease and changed through trauma and time. I believe to convey these things, the fragility inherent in the piece can’t be an illusion. Even if it was so well done that people couldn’t tell at a glance, I would know and so lose connection to the work. In terms of practical sturdiness, consideration of a work’s spirit, purpose, and message will always come first.

I can’t fully ignore practicalities: as a working artist I must consider the moving and handling of work. Committed to allowing the work to be what it must, I am prepared to be its advocate. Providing clear, detailed install instructions is one way I can do this when I am not the installer. Even if not shown with the work, these instructions open another path for writing about the work and a way to better incorporate mindfulness in my practice: explaining how the work should be handled will be a reflection of how I should be handled as well, by myself and others.

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