A Q+A With Fall Artists-in-Residence, Emily McBride and Emma Wood

From Fall 2023 to Winter 2024, Emily McBride and Emma Wood worked tirelessly to develop their artistic practice and produce work for their culminating exhibit, “re-ti-cu-la-tion: Studies of Familiar and Unfamiliar Networks.” The two found an unexpected similarity between their projects, which used very different approaches to working with glass. Emma’s work drew on mycorrhizal networks and their fruiting bodies, mushrooms, while Emily took a more literal approach to “networks” with a series of structures built from thin glass rods.

Read on to hear the artists speak about their work, inspirations, and post-residency plans!

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Tell me about your arts practice. What’s your relationship with glass?

EMILY MCBRIDE: I feel like there's two sides to my practice where I do functional items you can use, and then I make more sculptural, installation-based work. Sometimes I feel like they're in conflict with each other, and sometimes they can inform each other.

But I’ve been working in Glass for about 17 years. Oh my god, that just sounds so wild now! But, that was what I originally went to school for and kind of got sucked into. There's such a steep learning curve and there's so much you can do with it that I did end up just sticking to it.

When I went to grad school, I took some time to expand to other mediums. It was really refreshing, just knowing that I can make art that isn't tied to specific equipment and materials. But I do keep coming back to it, and I keep finding different ways to challenge myself in glass.

Emily McBride’s “Warped Grid.” Borosilicate glass, 2023.

EMMA WOOD: I have kind of taken a non-traditional route with my art practice. Right after graduating from high school here in Minneapolis, I studied in Sweden at a community college for about a year. And that's when I got into my own art practice. Since then I’ve been taking on residencies as a way of working through my artwork and as a kind of self-study.

I started working with glass in, I believe, 2020. I had a chance to do a work exchange with FOCI, the Minnesota Center for Glass Arts. I’d always wanted to get into glass–my mom's side of the family is from Sweden, and so I have a strong connection to Småland, home of the “Kingdom of Crystal.” So, glass has been around for a while for me, and I was really excited to find a way to get into glass myself.

A selection of realistic depictions of fungi, by Emma Wood. Borosilicate and soft glass, 2023.

What techniques or project did you aim to explore during the residency?

EM: I took a class this past summer specifically in a technique called “networking,” which is building structures using thin rods. This was a direction I wanted to explore, so I focused on using this technique in larger-scale pieces. With other types of flameworking, you're working over a big flame, but with this a lot of times I'm working with a really tiny pinpoint flame which lets you work in a much bigger scale.

Part of the residency was making forms and then seeing how I could distort them using different processes. For some I use the big torch, and for others I have been putting these pieces in a kiln and letting them slump over a form to change shape. It’s come down to having a very structured piece, but then making gravity a factor to give it movement.

EW: During the residency I was working on a collection of glass mushroom specimens from the Midwest. The project is kind of a natural merge of my interest in foraging and my interest in glass.

I've been really interested in foraging since I lived in Sweden, because my grandparents would forage all the time and I learned from them. Over time, I became interested in a way of documenting fungi to help myself ID them, first through photography and then through 3D sculpture as that’s become part of my practice.

I was really inspired by the Blaschka Glass Flowers collection at the Harvard Museum. It's an extensive body of work–I think there's over 780 specimens–of botanically accurate plants, preserved in a medium that doesn’t deteriorate. I was so captivated by it! But I was also like, “where are the fungi?” They're such a fleeting, mysterious organism that are always around us. In comparison to 50% of plants, less than 10% of fungi are classified. And that's just a weird disproportionate number.

Emily McBride fuses two curved glass rods together with a small hand torch.

What are some of the first ideas you had for this project? And how has it changed from the start of the residency until now?

EM: In the beginning I was trying to kind of go large scale, but then I'd be like, “wait, I don't really know if I like this or not.” I started making smaller tests to kind of see what I wanted to focus on. For the show I incorporated some of those smaller tests, and some larger versions of them. 

I'm excited to kind of have some space with it a little later on, to be able to sit with the objects and see how they can inform other pieces in the future.

EW:  I did a lot of tests for most of the residency. Glass sometimes looks a little bit different when it’s cold versus when it’s melted, so it’s been a lot of testing and making small pieces of specimens to really get the forms and colors down.

I originally wanted to do a lot of different native species from Minnesota specifically, but after going through these tests it became clear that the finished work is going to be on the smaller end. It's been a huge learning experience that has been really awesome.

What are your future plans? Either for this body of work, or for your flameworking practice in the future?

EM: Working in flameworking specifically with this type of glass is new to me. I've only been doing it for a year now, and I want to keep exploring it.

I’ve just been really drawn to the grids and meshes and patterns that you find in, say, construction materials. I’m playing with incorporating a little color into it too, but everything might just stay clear. I do want to spend more time photographing the pieces, and maybe playing with the images. 

EW: I definitely want to continue with this project. It's been a project that I've wanted to do for a while, but this was the first step of being able to actualize it because of the generous studio access and material stipend. In order to achieve really detailed specimens, flameworking is the route to go—You just can't get those dimensions or that detail in the hot shop or with flat glass.

This residency has been a pivotal point for me, just having time, space, and funding to learn about flameworking. Flameworking is actually really new to me. It's really just opened up a whole set of material and tools that I have now, so it’s more a matter of adding more time and practice to it. 

Emma Wood works at a bench. A number of finished pieces are visible on the table in front of them.

Comments have been edited for clarity and length.