Join us for First Friday! Exhibition will feature the work of glass artist Ethan Townsend.

Drinking Heat by Ethan Townsend

Physical memories fade quickly. Weeks after leaving my home, Hawaii, I can’t remember the feeling of drying ocean salt on my skin or squishing rich red mud through my toes. My emotional memories tied to these physical acts, last for a couple of months longer, but also warp. Neuroscientist Donna Bridge describes recalling a memory as a game of telephone. “A memory is not simply an image produced by time traveling back to the original event—it can be an image that is somewhat distorted because of the prior times you remembered it.” While my physical memories of home abandon me completely, my emotional memories distort and conglomerate into an unspecific feeling of immense warmth and comfort. 

This new memory is initially born from feelings of nostalgia but does not result in feelings of homesickness because it has been detached and abstracted from my experiences of home; the memory is pulled away from nostalgia and into a meditative warm sensation. By investigating and documenting heat phenomena, I attempt to place the viewer within meditative moments of materiality. The work places me back into Hawaii’s natural phenomena—the ocean and wind. Capturing molten glass’ relationship to heat and fluidity, the show places the viewer within their own experiences with natural and material phenomena.