06/03/2026
🔵 New Window Exhibition Alert 🔵
Clusters
Mary Catherine Porter
June 5 - November 5, 2026
opening reception: this Friday June 5, 7-9pm
When I first started working with glass, I started messing around with the pieces that I had accidentally broken and reconfiguring them into unplanned compositions. The imagery reflects what I’m thinking about while working: my everyday life in Hamilton, my childhood growing up in Nova Scotia, dreams I’ve had, the news, or the culture I’m taking in. The pieces sometimes reference the decorative and historical tradition of leaded stained glass, but weirded through discordant colour choices or asymmetry.
Each piece is an experiment, informed by my background in collage and painting, rather than traditional stained glass, which is designed in advance. This approach, which has involved honing new skills with my hands, as well as intuitive problem solving, appealed to me as it allowed for periods of sustained focus, something that I’ve struggled with in the last few years.
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about my attention, focus, and how easily I’m distracted. I'm concerned about what The Friends of Attention collective calls "attention fracking" media and technology,* how it affects my children's minds and my own, exacerbates anxieties, and the broader harmful implications for our culture and politics. I’ve come to really appreciate art that creates what the collective calls “attentional situations.” Coloured glass, hung in a window, can create moments in which we pay more attention, as our perception of it changes constantly depending on the direction and the intensity of the light coming through and how it throws changing shadows onto the built environment it inhabits. It allows us the opportunity to slow down, observe, and mindfully take in what’s in front of us.
*The Friends of Attention. Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement. Crown, 2026.
📸 Paige Paton
Image description in alt text.
