Fine Arts Faculty member Cora Cluett has been awarded an Established Artist Grant from the Ontario Arts Council for the Research and Creation of new work.
As a means of exploring these ideas, I have been using found crystal and pressed glassware to make photograms as these objects are typically viewed as being distinctly feminine, but more importantly, as representative of a particular generation of women. The glassware, dishes and tea sets that I seek out and use to make my work remind me of my mother’s generation of women who coveted and used these items for special occasions. In particular, they were used for rites of passage such as bridal and baby showers or tea parties marking some familial or communal milestone. The glassware can spend a considerable amount of time sitting on thrift store shelves, and I began to take stock of how long a particular sugar bowl might sit on the shelf before it is marked down for quicker sale. For me they have become metaphors for the aging female body. I interpret these delicate glass objects as being in a perpetual state of liminality, on the threshold between binary opposites such as; young/old, loss/birth, past/present, absence/presence." - Cora Cluett