smash the ceiling, floor, and walls;
take the broken shards and blow it back
October 4, 2024 – January 20, 2025
FEATURED ARTISTS
Sandra Bacchi
Dawn Bendick
Layo Bright
Scout Cartagena
Laura Hudspith
Michelle Young Lee
Aullar Mateo
Anna Mlasowsky
Audie Murray
Kathleen Mulcahy
Gracia Nash
Karen Donnellan and Suzanne Peck
Georgia Saxelby
Kristiina Uslar
Ann Weathersby
From the Curator
Dominating hierarchies in which the subordination of one person or group to another are spatial and social, artistically complex and mobile.
smash the ceiling, floor, and wall; take the broken shards and blow them back showcases nationally and internationally trailblazing women, femmes, and gender non-conforming artists across genres and generations boldly and unapologetically responding to ongoing internalized and institutionalized relegations by advocating for health care and bodily autonomy, equality, freedom from violence and femicide, sexual liberation, self-actualization and professional recognition, in glass.
The works are critiques of gender-based oppression and pieces of imaginative futures, representing an array of experiences that historical, political, personal, and professional glass ceilings impose. Smashing is one action that can lead to further dismantling and recrafting fueled by anger, frustration, sadness, intellect, love, humor, vindication, and hope.
There is more to be gained from these tangible barriers being broken every day. There are shards to be acknowledged and shared. There are splinters and fragments of history still to be collected. There are parts to be remembered. There is fodder for creative care and collective liberation in every piece of glass.
—Alyssa Velazquez
Pittsburgh, PA, US
www.velazquezalyssa.com
@velazquezalyssa
Alyssa Velazquez is a cultural historian, playwright, actress, and writer of gender, performance, and material culture.
Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Matieral Intelligence, The Tower, Scraps Literary Journal, The Establishment, AutoStraddle, GRLSQUASH, The Fashion Studies Journal, Women’s History Magazine, Juggad: A Material Religions Project, and the Votive Project. Past residencies include Lambda Literary Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices 2024, City Books Writer-in-Residence, and as a Freshworks Artist at Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh, PA. She is a proud member of Dramatists Guild of America.
She holds a MFA from the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, and a BA from Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland.
Alyssa currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
About the Artists
This exhibition wouldn’t be possible without the participation of the following women, femmes, and gender non-conforming individuals.
Pittsburgh, PA, US
www.sandrabacchi.com
@sandrajonasbacchi
Sandra Bacchi is a Brazilian-American visual artist based in Pittsburgh, PA. Working with photography, video, and glass, her works weave together fiction and truth to tell more open-ended stories about how human beings find common ground. Bacchi has shown her work nationally and internationally at The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Griffin Museum of Photography, and Houston Center for Photography. In 2022, her Watermelons Are Not Strawberries series was published as a photobook by Yoffy Press and exhibited as a solo show at Concept Gallery. Past residencies include the 2022-2023 Distillery Program at Brew House. Bacchi is a member of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh.
London, UK
www.theobservatory.co
@observatorystudios
Dawn Bendick began her academic pursuit at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD, focusing on the Josef Albers approach to colour theory. Subsequently, she gained a Masters in Material Futures at Central Saint Martins in London. The National Museum of Norway acquired her work in 2022 and she served as a Colour Consultant for a Tower of London installation. Beyond her creative output, Bendick has lectured and conducted workshops at institutions including Parsons in New York, Delft University in the Netherlands, and Central Saint Martins in London. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Times London, DAMN magazine, Elle Decor, and FRAME magazine, underscoring her impact in the spheres of art and design.
Brooklyn, NY, US
www.layobright.com
@layobright
Layo Bright’s sculptural practice explores migration, inheritance, legacy and identity through hybrid portraits, textiles, and mixed media works that highlight natural forms and ancestral memory. Bright received her LL. B (Hons.) from Babcock University, was called to the Nigerian Bar Association and received her MFA in Fine Art (Hons.) from the Parsons School of Design. Bright has exhibited work both internationally and nationally. Solo and group exhibitions include: Dawn and Dusk, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Rockhaven, moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL; The Alchemists, Johnson Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA; Undercurrents, Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, NY; Lubeznik Center for the Arts, Michigan City, IN; Bode Projects, Berlin, Germany; Phillips, New York, NY; among others.
Chicago, IL, US
www.scoutcartagena.com
@scoutcartagenamakes
Scout Cartagena is a sculptural artist and printmaker. Through a multi-disciplinary practice that uses printmaking, glass, audio and video, and performance they create works that attempt to find moments of stillness, capture fleeting memory, and express fractures created from the struggle of mental health and chronic illness tied with their identity of being Afro-Latine. Cartagena received their BFA in Glass and Art Education certification at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia, and is currently attending School of The Art Institute of Chicago for their MFA in sculpture.
Ireland
www.karendonnellan.com
@cosmicwetness
Karen Donnellan is an Irish artist, energy healer, and educator working across sculpture, installation, and music. Their not-so-secret agenda is one of love, magic, justice, beauty, and pleasure.
Toronto, ON, Canada
www.laurahudspith.com
@laura.hudspith
Laura Hudspith is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines the personal health and socio-cultural possibilities that might arise through cultivating a practice of turning inwards. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Enduring Emanations at Mrs., New York (2024); Thump, Whoosh, Rumble at The Miller ICA, Pittsburgh (2023); Everything Once Arranged Has Become Scattered at The Anderson, Richmond (2023), There are seams in purgatory at The McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown (2022), and Move Objects On at The Plumb, Toronto (2021). Her work has been supported by the Frank-Ratchye Studio for Creative Inquiry, Toronto Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Hudspith holds a BFA from Concordia University (2013), and an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University (2023). She is currently based in Toronto.
United States
www.mylstudio.art
@nahmyl
Michelle Young Lee is a second-generation diasporic Korean-American artist whose multimedia installations are containers for healing through anger, grieving and play. Her creative work arises from certain lived experiences, be it intergenerational trauma or resulting from the vectors of migration, mothering, racism, economic and ecological precarity. Lee’s political and poetic treatment of on the ground realities of late stage capitalism and its impacts on local communities and ecology have manifested as projects hosted at MoMA PS1 & Harvard University; artists talks at AHL Foundation, A.I.R Gallery, and the New Britain Museum of Art; and curricula design and teaching at Parsons School of Design. She has exhibited her work widely in the US and internationally. She received her MFA from NYU in 2013 and a BFA from CalArts in 2006.
Brooklyn, NY, US
www.aullarmateo.com
@aullarmateo
Aullar Mateo is an artist and educator who identifies as trans non-binary and is based in Brooklyn, NY. They work with various mediums, but for the last five years, they have been dedicated to working in glass, specifically pâte de verre. Through glass sculptures and installations, they explore the multifaceted meaning of the word transition along with its physical and emotional elements. Aullar was a BA candidate at the Visual Arts Conservatory of SUNY Purchase College, with a concentration in Painting. In addition, they attended FIT and The Art Students League before earning a BA in Visual Arts and Arts Management at SUNY Empire State College. Aullar served as the Education Manager at UrbanGlass where they also completed the Bead Project in 2019 and finished an art residency in 2023.
Seattle, WA, US / Stockholm, Sweden
www.annamlasowsky.com
@annamlasowsky
Anna Mlasowsky is an artist, curator, and professor in craft at Konstfack University. She holds a BA in Glass from the Royal Danish Academy and an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Washington. Anna is a recipient of a TAG Grant (2015), an IASPIS Grant (2013) from the Swedish Arts Council, an Artist Trust Fellowship (2017) and 4Culture Grant (2019), she was most recently a Haas Fellow at the Science History Institute (2021-22) and an artist in residence at Amazon (2022). She received an Aldo Bellini Award (2015), the John and Joyce Price Award of Excellence (2018) a Toyama Glass Biennial Silver Prize and was a Museum of Art and Design Burk Prize finalist. Her work is in the collections of institutions such as The Corning Museum of Glass (NY), The Toyama City Art Museum (Japan), the Castello Sforzesco (Milan, Italy) and the Museum of Art and Design (NY).
Pittsburgh, PA, US
www.kathleenmulcahy.com
@kathleenmulcahyart
Kathleen Mulcahy is an independent artist and Cofounder of the Pittsburgh Glass Center with her husband Ron Desmett (1948-2016). A graduate of Kean University with a BFA Teaching Degree and an MFA in Glass Art and Dimensional Design from Alfred University, Mulcahy developed the Glass Programs at Bowling Green University 1975-76 and Carnegie Mellon University 1976-1989. In 1979 she was awarded National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, in 1984, a Fulbright Award for Italy, in 1992, Artist of the Year in Pittsburgh, in 1996 awarded the Creative Achievement Award through the Cultural Trust of Pittsburgh, in 2013, the Governor’s Award, Pennsylvania’s Artist of the Year. In 1989 she left teaching to develop her own studio with her husband and partner Ron Desmett. She continues to work in her studio in Oakdale.
Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
@chi.fii_
Audie Murray is a visual artist who works with a multitude of mediums such as sculpture, media, beadwork and drawing. Her practice is informed by the process of making and visiting to explore themes of contemporary culture, embodied experiences and lived dualities. These modes of working assist with the recentering of our collective connection to bodies, ancestral knowledge systems, and relationality. Murray is Cree-Métis from the Lebret and Meadow Lake communities located on Treaty 4 & 6 territories and is currently based in Oskana kâ-asastêki (Regina, Saskatchewan).
Rochester, NY, US
www.gracianash.com
Gracia Nash is a glass, performance, and multi-media artist from Rochester, New York. She received her BFA from Alfred University and her MFA in Glass from Rochester Institute of Technology. Her work explores glass textiles, skin, and the body, realized into sculpture, installation, video, and photography. She has shown and taught nationally and internationally and held artist residencies at Pilchuck Glass School and in Japan. Nash is currently an adjunct professor at RIT.
Rochester, NY, US
www.suzannepeck.com
@suzannepeck
Suzanne Peck is a visual artist, writer, curator and educator. She earned her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design’s glass department. Indeed, glass provides continued inspiration in her work, even when the substance itself is absent (isn’t glass always, in a way, absent?). Using glass, photography, digital video and new media, her art practice considers touch, interconnectivity and skin through the lens of sculpture and installation. Her work is exhibited worldwide and held in both public and private collections. Suzanne teaches at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Suzanne lives and creates in Rochester, NY.
Los Angeles, CA, US
www.georgiasaxelby.com
@georgia.saxelby
Georgia Saxelby is an interdisciplinary artist who explores through sculpture, moving image, performance and architectural interventions, dream worlds as interior sites of feminist and queer logics with the power to upturn hierarchies, glitch rational time and space, and conjure expansive modes of seeing. Her work has exhibited internationally, including at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, The Phillips Collection, The American University Museum, and the Australian Embassy, all in Washington D.C.; the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh; Artspace, Sydney, and The Samstag Museum, Adelaide. Saxelby’s work has been covered internationally by BBC News, Al Jeezera, Forbes, The Washington Post and Fox5 National News. She completed her Master of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University and was a recent Artist in Residence at the Pittsburgh Glass Center in 2023-24.
Estonia
www.kristiinauslar.com
Kristiina Uslar graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2007 (MA), and has continued to work at the glass department first as a technician and as a lecturer and later also as an associate professor and head of the department. Now she is a freelance artist. Her works have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Europe, Japan and the USA, and can be found in public collections such as the Toyama Glass Art Museum, the Glasmuseet Ebeltoft and the European Museum for Modern Glass in Coburg. Her focus is on the pâte de verre technique, whose delicate and fragile materiality she subverts by making bold and decisive forms with an industrial reference.
New York City, NY, US
www.annweathersby.com
@annweathersby
Ann Weathersby is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She grew up in the strangely paradoxical world of the 1970’s and ‘80s Deep South where conservative yet hedonistic visions of idealized femininity reflected the often-inextricable links between violence and nostalgia in American culture. Her work has been exhibited at Anthology Film Archives, New York; Chicago Cultural Center; Clamp, New York; Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles; F, Houston; Foley Gallery, New York; Fortnight Institute, New York; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; signs and symbols, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and Winter Street Gallery, Edgartown. Her work has been featured most recently in Artforum, F Magazine, and Musée Magazine. She has been a resident at Urban Glass in Brooklyn, holds an MFA from Yale University, and has taught at the School of Visual Arts for over 20 years.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Support the work of these artists and Pittsburgh Glass Center by sharing snapshots of this exhibition on social media with the tag @pghglasscenter and hashtags
#breaktheglassceiling
#smashthepatriarchy
#blowbackharder
or by becoming involved in creating spaces for joy and freedom with some of our favorite liberatory and arts-focused organizations in the region, Let’s Get Free and Dreams of Hope.
The Equal Rights Amendment was proposed almost 100 years ago; if we are to move to broader Constitutional equality we need to stand with each other and for each other to empower us all. Consider supporting the TGI Justice Project, donating to Let’s Get Free: a Softer Landing Fund, or calling your representatives regarding the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Acknowledgements
This exhibition is made possible with support from Arts Equity & Education Fund.
Alyssa Velazquez thanks the Pittsburgh Glass Center, particularly Heather McElwee, Valerie Bundy, Paige Ilkhanipour, Morgan Hawkins, Olive Hughes, Jason Forck, and Rachel Niederberger for contributing their talents, time, and attention, to the organization and promotion of this exhibition.
Additional acknowledgements to the many powerful people, friends, and family in my life modeling self-assuredness, strength, and perseverance, specifically my mother and father, Ivette and Steve Velazquez. There is no ceiling when it comes to your love.
