Center for Craft, Sep 30, 2022-Jan 27, 2023

Supported by the 2021 Center for Craft Artist Research Fund, Crafting the Future, Tyler School of Art & Architecture at Temple University, and Corning Museum of Glass.

Disclosure: The Whiteness of Glass is a project organized by Related Tactics (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, Nate Watson) that builds space for artists of color to build meaningful connections with one another and reexamines collective experiences negotiating systemic racism in the field. We reinterpret DEI data as material, to offer artists an opportunity to reimagine and remake the wounds of systemic racism within a collaborative and elaborate game of telephone. We have seen the impact a lack of representation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color have had on ourselves, our peers, and the artistic community as a whole, and seek to build transformative networks between practitioners in the field that shift those entrenched dynamics and imagine new futures for ourselves. This project is funded and supported by the a 2021-22 Craft Research Fund—Artist Fellowship and Corning Museum of Glass.

The project takes place in 3 stages (between October 2021-March 2022):

1.  Drawings: Related Tactics creates a set of  visualizations/drawings that look at the impact of a  lack of representation in glass institutions, educational  spaces, and the broader artistic field. 

2.  Artist Instructions: A second group of artists  creates a set of textual artist instructions that interpret  those visualizations and translates them to creative  actions. This might be thought of as Fluxus instructions  or a performance score. They can be more direct or  poetic, but are not 1-to-1 fabrication instructions. 

3. Glass Studio Session: A third group of glass  artists will gather in a glass studio and work in teams  to interpret and enact the artist instructions from the  second group. These interpretations may be sculptures  or they may be more ephemeral performance actions,  as seems most appropriate. The session will take place  at the glass studio at Tyler School of Art & Architecture,  Temple University. 

Contributing artists: Joyce Scott, Ché Rhodes, Einar & Jamex de la Torre, Cheryl Derricotte, Corey Pemberton, and Emily Leach; and glass responses by Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez, Vanessa German, Helen Lee, Pearl Dick, Kim Thomas, and Raya Friday.

Exhibition history:

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, May 25, 2024 – August 24, 2024

Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY. November 9-March 31, 2024

Center for Craft, Sep 30, 2022-Jan 27, 2023