Brynn Hurlstone, Cacophony

My work is alive, in continual transformation, and activated by human presence. Steel weakens, bleeding turquoise and gold under the gentle spill of water; glass beckons and responds to touch; salt grows ever-intensifying formations. Fleeting iterations of materiality are captured onto form and surface, becoming tangible echoes deepened by the wordless resonance of embodied sensation. Using a teleological, experimental practice, I explore facets of trauma, question normative behavior, and examine vulnerability through the interplay of materials distilled to their simplest, most poetic essence. Taking my lead from their unforced transformations, I pursue connective moments that give voice to the unspeakable. Subtle gestures, layered revelations, and precarious objects evade the catharsis of a quick read and invite engagement within environments that call for effort, slowness, care, and genuine connection. By setting aside the traditional boundaries of visual art, my work initiates questions that can easily be followed outward from the rarified space of fine art.

Brynn Hurlstone is a transdisciplinary artist, educator, administrator, and fabricator who creates consumptive, sensorial objects and environments that invite engagement, often gesturing toward the taboo by utilizing the inherent, perceived fragility of glass, and the ephemerality of presence via material transformation. Hurlstone's work considers trauma and its relationship to precarity, unspeakability, isolation, connection, and release by allowing material reactivity and subjective experience to speak reciprocally through her work.

Hurlstone is the owner of Second Generation Glassworks, the cofounder of the Glass Impact nonprofit coalition, and the former Director of Operations of Public Glass in San Francisco. She received a BFA from Bowling Green State University and an MFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture where she was awarded a Graduate Teaching Assistantship and two Deans Grants for research. She has participated in numerous exhibitions, including No Signal at Stella Elkins Gallery, the Glass Art Society International Student Exhibition, and the recent national exhibition Through a Glass Darkly at Delaware Contemporary Museum, which was hailed as the “new guard of glassmakers” in the Spring 2023 issue of Glass Magazine. She currently resides in Philadelphia, PA.