Ashley Natasha Bedet

MFA Glass

A Modality of Love

My practice evolves through a close relation to materials, most recently with post-consumer glass. After its life as a discreet commodity, I begin to observe how value and visibility can be repositioned. Each glass surface carries a contradiction: the more transparent, perfect, or refined it becomes, the more invisible its makers.

There is a contradiction which lives in the binary of man-made versus handmade. Much of my practice is calling anonymous labor back to the surface, while also asking what else the material can be. Flaws, visible as scratches, fractures, or breakage in discarded objects, reveal much about the materials’ inherent qualities. Light then illuminates the revelation that countless hands, once vanished into anonymity through industrial processes, become visible through what is mediated, layered, and refracted by another set of hands. I honor the material world’s resourcefulness as a filter through which to re-see the world.

I believe that it is the task of the artist to reveal what is invisible or unseen. It is a task which is undertaken not simply because one can or should, but as something altogether outside of a system of power, ownership, or knowing. It is a space of alterity and to hold its threshold open is an act of love.