Briana McCarthy

For this piece, I am exploring death as a business, which I also touched on in the Unit 1 critical reflection. The monetization of death can put the bereaved in a position of further hardship when they are at their most vulnerable. If they can not afford all the bells and whistles to "properly" provide memorial and services in the name of their lost loved one, this can breed shame and further complicate grief. Death as a business is morally gray at best and predatory and abhorrent at its worst.

This piece will depict a deceased woman, who we see from the chest up like in a coffin, lying in a boat: beautiful, serene, treasured. Her mouth and throat will be grotesquely stuffed with silver coins, as the cost of crossing has gone way up. The depiction is referencing the Greek myth of Charon, the ferryman for the River Styx. Greeks would put a silver coin in the deceased's mouth to pay their passage. The figure will be wrapped in a white funeral shroud, white also implicating innocence and purity. 

The figure will be painted on an ash board lightly carved like the prow of a boat. The wood was chosen for the shape of this piece and for the grain pattern made from light and dark rings. 

These pieces are stained glass. The cut shapes are meant to resemble fingers, each finger having 3 segments. This work is an evolution of How Monstrous If I Healed. Fingers have become a signifier of loss and memorial in my current work: a metaphor for the feeling of grief, like losing a limb, and it's ability to physically and mentally disable you.

I measured my own fingers then cut them from cardboard so I could easily try different shapes and combination. Aside from the chains, which will be touched on further down the page, I fashioned each design from the same fingers that are missing from the hands in How Monstrous If I Healed.

I made necklaces that are too bulky and fragile to wear comfortably, mirroring my feelings of navigating the world since my Mother's death. I am always torn between needing people to know of the loss I've endured and not wanting anyone to know at all.

As a material, glass evokes feelings of memory and memorial for me: being able to see through clearly, but there is still a barrier between, sometimes the image is distorted by the glass (by time), and stained glass windows bring to mind churches and places where memorial services often occur.

When choosing the colors and opacity of glass for each finger, I am thinking of memory but also of decomposition and the cycles that bring us back to the earth.

Currently, I am working out display for these pieces. I will be trying them with a thicker, much heavier chain replacing the dainty ones that are attached to some pieces. I am interested in the weight of memory, strength and fragility, and the concept of being chained to our own memories and grief as well as society's expectations. These will likely be able to be worn, but I also am preparing some wall mounted "necks" to display these on in a gallery space.

As I shift from delicate chains to thicker ones for the earlier glass pieces, I also begin to think about chains made of memory. I have been experimenting with making my own chains out of glass. Above are two chains segments: one is made of pointer fingers and the other pinky fingers. I also have plans to push the 3 dimensional further creating chain links that are hollow structures. I am considering if I wish to put elements inside of these, such as pieces of my poetry or memorial items like locks of hair or the sawdust that I saved from my earlier work 8 Day Vigil: 9 years, 37 years, 70 years.