JUST ART LECTURE 1: Erin O’Connor "A Geoanthropology of Studio Glass"

An Geoanthropology of Studio Glass offers an account of studio glass that integrates the human experience of self-determination and creativity with the living (and dying) ecological world. Methodologically, this employs ethnogeology, a qualitative research method combining ethnography (the mapping of social interactions, material culture, and systems of social relations) and geology (the study of the earth) to show how a people, or ethnos (glassblowers), become with the geo (earth) in the interrelated dynamics of making and resource extraction.

Theorizing at the geo-bio interstices of becoming a studio glassblower, this constitutes a symgeological account. BIO Erin E. O’Connor is an internationally recognized expert in craft studies and Associate Professor of Sociology at Marymount Manhattan College, New York City. Her research specializes in glass, the arts, knowledge, materiality, embodiment, and the environment. Her monograph, Fire-Craft: Art, Body, and World among Glassblowers (Columbia University Press, 2025) explores the human condition through the embodied and material dynamics of becoming a studio glassblower. In 2023, she received the Rakow Grant for Glass Research at the Corning Museum of Glass, launching her current book project, The Middle Mineral & the Mine: An Ethnogeology of Studio Glass. This research follows the intersecting threads of the art’s medium, revealing the material life of mines, minerals, and the deep time of geology.

The first lecture is a collaboration with the Groninger Museum, Minerva Art Academy, and ERC FACERE.

The Just Art Lectures are part of the JUST ART Project