here. now. close. / Mesa Contemporary Art Museum

2025

Costume of Absence / Orchestra of Bodies, mold-blown glass and sand

Photos by Aaron Rothman

here. now. close. is a relational sound and object installation based on the simple shape of a heart. The title is inspired by research into neural bereavement – a term that describes the changes in the brain when grieving. The work traces our experience of loss through three dimensions: space (here), time (now), and attachment (close).* The installation pays special attention to the last measurement—closeness—outlining the invisible contours of grief.

Costumes of Absence / Orchestra of Bodies is a series of vessels made by blowing glass into a reusable mold. Originating in early death practices, mold making was used to create masks of the deceased, a way to represent or repeat something that was lost. Here, the ‘mother-mold’ is a combination of welded metal hearts that typify the coiled scroll work and common decorative pattern found on fences in the Southwest. The sculptures refer to the domestic symbolism of this familiar shape while conjuring the image of a hollow, pumping organ. Like a working heart, the mold bears repetitive action, the inflation of hot-glass pushing into the open voids of the metal shapes. The process of making the vessels, the physical actions, endurance and the collaboration between breath and body becomes committed to muscle memory. The glass vessels are like relics, representing their own presence and the absence of the mold that formed them.

The resonant sounds of the vessel’s interior curves and folds play from two speakers situated across the gallery from one another. Rubber tubing, the kind often used in glass blowing, directs air across the openings of the vessels to produce a low-pitched hum. The individual sounds are recorded and layered, referring to the solitary and communal aspects of the act of glass blowing, while mirroring the ways we experience grief. Echoes of abstraction, spatial and atmospheric activation combine to become an expression of loss. Sound asks the viewer to participate in the intimate act of listening, to internalize it, a practice that over time builds closeness.

-Exhibition Text by Sara Hubbs

RELATED:

Hubbs, Sara, here. now. close., exhibition text