Material #13 - Blown away
“I love flaunting the material in new, unexpected ways”
So says one of the contestants, Quade, in a new season of the show “Blown Away”. It’s one of my younger son’s favorite shows, in which glass-blowers are given a new challenge each week, and compete through rounds of elimination. The format replicates so many similar shows. And in this fourth season the competition dimension is ramped up even more - “bigger, bolder, hotter”, is the tagline - which is totally unnecessary. But despite that, it still has me hooked.
There’s the astonishment of glassblowing itself. Of taking a molten colorless liquid that originated in sand, blasting and manipulating it with heat, tools and air, turning it into solid yet highly fragile creations – a process that’s been around for over two thousand years.
There are the characters and stories of each of the glassblowers, elements of which are “on show” in the show, elements of which remain private, and which the glassblowers handle as additional material in the making of their art.
And there are the creations themselves, which emerge arranged on pedestals in the last segment of each episode – a segment entitled “Present”. All unique, and all no doubt differing to an extent from what the artist had conceived in their mind at the outset, taking on a life of their own as people observe and react to them.
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Here’s another take on “material” from Deborah Czeresko from the first season of Blown Away, on her piece “Meat Me in the Middle”:
“I see glass as an androgynous material, embodying both masculinity and femininity. It’s sharp when it breaks, and can also be soft when it forms. It occupies all these different states. As a material I connect with it very much in that way”
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Through 2024, It’s Material is sharing one use of the word “material” each week, on Tuesdays.