Audio recording

To the right of Soundsuit 8:46, is text, shards 5 by Santa Fe-based artist Judy Tuwaletstiwa. At first glance, this work may appear plush, and fabric-like in materiality, but it is in fact a unique collage of glass shards. Carefully observe each layer and color on the canvas before you. There are several unique qualities in Tuwaletstiwa’s handling of colored glass. It is rarely coveted by glassmiths or glassblowers to leave glass so opaque and granulated, and forgoing accepted glass working techniques, the colors created by the artist also shirked established glass color processes.

In 2012, Tuwaletstiwa participated in an 18-month residency at the Bullseye Glass Resource Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Exploring silica sand, which is the raw beginnings of glass, and glass’s properties of color, she mixed silica powders to create 6 inches by 6 inches colored squares intended for a swatch mural in the home office of Bullseye Glass Company. For many glassmiths, the conventional understanding of color mixture is that a brown tone would be the product of any two colors. Tuwaletstiwa’s control of portioning allowed her to create 1600 new colors. After firing the swatches and installing the final artwork, the artist stored the residual color mixtures in her studio, only to rediscover them 8 years later. Not wanting to waste the unique samples of sand, she began rhythmically pouring tiny piles of the color mixtures directly onto a kiln shelf. While using a cherished, over a century old, dessert spoon that was a friend’s family heirloom to create her piles, Tuwaletstiwa reflected on the passing of human time. The artist states, “Silica sand, through a process of destruction and creation, forms over millions of years of geologic time, sand is a living synthesis of the creative process itself.”

Her surname, gained from her husband who is a registered member of the Hopi Nation, is a Hopi word meaning “wind making ripples in the sand.” Albeit a serendipitous and poetic connection, Tuwaletstiwa’s reflection on meaning and the process of firing glass allowed her to uniquely approach the raw material. Each mound, fired at a relatively low temperature for melting glass, 1250 degrees F, was able to retain the grainy texture, ripples, and muted, matte quality while solidifying their form. Each shard was then intuitively glued to the diptych canvas, with consideration for composition. Ever-present are the compound origins of each shard as the fine edges make evident the sharp, delicate nature of glass.