paper-glass folds #1

Abstract

This series of glass sculptures explores the materialization of translation. My process and output investigate what it means to "touch" a translation, slowing down to examine the transitions between systems of signs. While reading about translation and language, I started taking notes, but rather than text-based, these are drawing notes, symbols and impressions on paper. These papers were then "translated" into three-dimensional shapes; folded into stereotypical paper folds - a plane, a boat, and an envelope - forms that embody movement and communication. I wanted to change the flexibility and fleeting nature of these paper embodiments, so I could look at the translation as it happens. Glass, chosen for its fragility, transparency, and sturdiness, made thinking about translation tangible. It allows the inside and the outside to coexist at the same level and opens a route for considering translation as both an empty vessel and a concrete matter, a breakable mass. Cut, printed, dried, placed, and stacked, glass was my medium for thinking about matter in translation. The material process is simultaneously a metaphor for translation and a translation in itself.