OConnor Hand Agglomerator.

Glassblowing as Terraforming: Posthumanist Turns in Theories of Embodied Knowledge

A Paul and Irene Hollister Lecture on Glass by Erin E. O’Connor (Marymount Manhattan College)

“The first silica mine that I visited had ‘pulled a shot’ that morning; they had dynamited a portion of the mountain, reducing half of the ridge before me to ten tons of rubble. The silica was largely destined for glassmaking factories serving the architecture and automotive industries. Yet, some silica would be shipped to glassmakers serving the contemporary Studio Glass art world.” —Erin E. O’Connor

In the mid-twentieth century, American artists turned to glass as a medium of expression, distinguishing themselves from factory glassworkers. Left out of this history—which is rich with artist biographies and aesthetic analyses of glass objects—is the material life of silica mines. In this lecture, Erin E. O’Connor connects the formation of glass objects to the ongoing formation of the earth, seeing them as two sides of one artistic process. Drawing from anthropological fieldwork at mines and a glassmaking facility in Appalachia to explore these intertwined yet unconnected realms, she aims to overcome a deep-seated dualism between human creativity and natural science that polarizes glassmaking (mixing ingredients) and glassblowing (making objects). In doing so, she addresses how the human experience of self-determination and creativity intersects with the living (and dying) ecological world.
Erin E. O’Connor is an associate professor of sociology and affiliate faculty of environmental studies at Marymount Manhattan College. She also contributes to the college’s BFA in art. She is a 2023 recipient of the Rakow Grant for Glass Research at the Corning Museum of Glass and the author of Fire-Craft: Art, Body, and World Among Glassblowers (In Contract, Columbia University Press). A world-recognized expert in craft studies, she offers a symgeologic account of American studio glassblowing from the vantage of mines and minerals in her current book project, The Middle Mineral & the Mine: An Ethnomineraology of Studio Glassblowing.