Salt Cradle

2019

Carved, charred salt and blown glass

Ranging in size from 3” x 3” x 7” to the full-size 16” x 18” x 24”

Produced at Wheaton Arts as a Fellow in Glass, 2018

Salt Cradle is the genesis of my ongoing work with blown glass & salt sculptures. My decades-long research in alchemical practice becomes embodied by material discourse: salt is symbol of the ritualized body within alchemical tradition. Within the tria prima, salt is the body, sulfur the soul, and mercury the spirit. When pressed hot into the salt, the glass forms a semi-collapsed egg or pillow of glass. This bubble is both an empty void, and supportive structure, for the salt body: a sacred space for both transformation, and a subsequent restful recovery into a new being. The relationship that transpires between the salt and hot glass occurs during a very short time, yet it changes and unites them both. Burn marks occur on the salt where it touches the hottest part of the glass, as an artifact of their alchemical interaction, a mark of transformation.