New Traditions

Jason McDonald, MFA 2023, Glass

My art and my art practice are inseparable. Every piece I create, from the humblest tumbler to the most baroque sculpture, makes a statement about isolation, striving, access, perseverance, boundary pushing, and excellence. I believe my identity as a working class black man, operating in a field reserved largely as a puerile pursuit for society's most privileged (whitest), is a powerful artistic and political gesture. The topics I address in my work range from identity politics to the wild pursuit of joy through craft. Sometimes my work is about creating a narrative through the material of glass to convey my lived experience of living in a still unequal nation. At other times my work is about using the medium of glass to explore and move forward boundaries in two directions; the limits of the material itself and discovering the extent of my own ability with it.