Multifaceted Femininity at Pittsburgh Glass Center

Imagine the metaphorical glass ceiling as a real, tangible thing. Imagine the size and weight of that (in)visible barrier, how strong it must be to keep so many down for so long.

Then imagine smashing it to pieces.

What would you do with the broken shards left behind? The artists of Pittsburgh Glass Center’s most recent exhibit breathe their answers to that question to life, drawing on their experiences as women, femmes, and gender non-conforming people. Smash the Ceiling, Floor, and Walls: Take the Broken Shards and Blow Them Back breaks down limited, constricting views of femininity and reforges them in their own image.

I thought I knew what to expect from the exhibit before visiting PGC, but that was blown to pieces the second I saw the first display. With such a powerful title, I envisioned a gallery full of sharp edges and bold shapes, pieces that railed against the patriarchy and marked their presence with a roar. But my immediate thought when I laid eyes on a cell-like piece by artist Anna Mlasowsky was, “How is it so delicate?” That defiance of expectation is exactly what gives Smash the Ceiling its strength.

The pieces in the exhibit are as powerful as I imagined them – but embodied with great nuance and care, and as much variety and versatility as the experience of femininity itself. Women and femmes are not a monolith; why should their art be any different? Femininity is versatile: it’s sharp and soft, it’s delicate and bold, it’s playful and protective. It is magical and biological. It’s cloudy for some and crystal clear for others. And in exhibiting these multifaceted perspectives together, Smash the Ceiling presents a fuller picture of the true breadth of womanhood and femininity.

Beyond Mlasowsky’s soft, cellular pieces at the front of the gallery, I discover a multitude of feminine expression in glass. Some large, heavy forms look as though they're carved from stone. A velvet tapestry glistens with fragile, icicle-like tassels. Impossibly tiny beads weave intricate shapes, or form a mysterious portal. A single blown glass piece, in the shape of a child’s toy in an exaggerated size, commands attention at the center of the room. No two pieces resemble one another: just like women. Just like our individual experiences of femininity.

Despite the variety of form, or perhaps because of it, themes begin to emerge. We see artists like Mlasowsky and Laura Hudspith examining nature-like elements: Mlasowksy with her blown-glass cells, and Hudspith with The Wild Woman’s Eye. The latter is a captivating work of stained glass, at once heavy and ethereal, with winding tendrils of copper emanating from a stained-glass center. Hudspith works often with forms that are both cellular and geological, bringing to the surface the natural intuitive potential of our bodies. The forms of The Wild Woman's Eye could be a tree cutting, or a human cell; Hudspith blurs the lines between the two as much as she connects them in a mystical in-between. Mlasowsky is also examining our relationships to our bodies with selected pieces from On ˚ Venus (a performance piece well worth watching in full). Rather than going inward like Hudspith, On ˚ Venus turns its critical eye toward outside expectations and judgments on the female body throughout its life. Both artists are playing with biological, physical realities, diving into the cellular, abstracting it, and examining it to see how our perspectives match up (or don’t) with those around us. Their pieces are as much about tuning into our own bodies as they are tuning out potentially harmful views of others, with a restrained balance of delicacy and strength.

Other artists are exploring somewhere in between the physical and metaphysical. Two artists grapple with the facets of personal identity through their use of glass beads. A small but powerful piece by Audie Murray, matrescence, uses glass beadwork woven into a mosaic, to capture the idea of motherhood as a long, ever-changing process of becoming. Just as each tiny bead gradually forms the full mosaic, so, too, does a mother's identity grow piece by piece from gestation to delivery to parenthood. And on the floor nearby, Gracia Nash has created an eerie, blue-tinted portal where beads are scattered like sand below a slowly-changing projection. What Lies Beneath stops just short of bringing to the surface "parts of one's identity that we hide consciously or subconsciously." With the projection above shifting at a nearly imperceptible rate – at the time of my visit, I could only make out a handprint – Nash draws attention to how we obfuscate and hide parts of ourselves that may long to be recognized, if not seen outright. The two pieces, What Lies Beneath and matrescence, create a strong conversation about the slow shift in personal identity, and society's perceptions of it. Murray notes that the process of matrescence "can last over ten years," but that many difficult parts of this transformation are overlooked by society while still romanticizing the idea of motherhood. Where Nash feels compelled to hide, Murray is moved to come out into the open; both play gently with the strength and vulnerability of self-expression.

This push and pull of identity is at the forefront of many of the works in Smash the Ceiling. Cartagena and Aullar Mateo both stand out with their unabashed expression and reclamation of their personal experiences. Cartagena's Noli Me Tangere (Latin for "touch me not") presents as a heraldic tapestry with a cascading "fringe" of flameworked glass. The work grapples with the complexity of religious identity and sexual touch, having had her views "befouled" after experiencing sexual assault in the church. Cartagena's own description of Noli Me Tangere mentions the glass fringe "makes a light twinkling sound when rustled," yet is "begging not to be touched." In this way, Cartagena's art reclaims the ability to draw her own boundaries around both physical touch and religious beliefs. Mateo, too, smashes through societal expectations and celebrates their nonbinary identity through their work. Their borosilicate glass jewelry is presented alongside photographer Sandra Bacchi's portraits of Mateo from the series I Am Not a Ghost, which traces Mateo's journey towards a celebration of self. Mateo's glasswork was the catalyst that led them onto their path of self-acceptance; and while their jewelry may not be explicitly about their identity, the identity is still within the work: finding oneself as an artist can, and often does, lead to finding oneself as an individual.

These are only a small selection of the incredible works presented at Pittsburgh Glass Center. I urge readers to seek out the artists and their work, each a shining gem of self-expression, because they deserve to be seen in their own full beauty and diversity. This is not all there is to say about the feminine experience; but all of it can only be said by multiple women, femmes, and gender non-conforming people, because femininity is an experience so vast that one person’s perspective cannot capture it all. Smash the Ceiling, Floor, and Walls: Take the Broken Shards and Blow Them Back takes the mythical monolith of femininity and smashes it to pieces so we can examine the multitudes within the shards – and build something new from them.