Glass, the Body, and the Irish Diaspora
@erin.z.zerbe Check out my work and the role of other Pierce College faculty members in the current exhibition at Pierce College Fort Steilacoom. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to attend the artist talk in two weeks as I’ll be recovering from my surgery. So this little video is a quick explanation of the themes of my work in the show.
♬ Reflection on Peace - Adauto Assis
“ Dia daoibh, céad míle fáilte. Is mise Z, agus is Gael-Mheiriceánach mé. Táim ag labhairt libh i nGaeilge—teanga mo shinsir, agus teanga dhúchais na hÉireann.”
“ Hello and welcome. My name is Z, and I’m Irish-American. I’m speaking in Irish—the language of my ancestors, the Indigenous language of Ireland.”
This short video is an introduction to my work in the faculty exhibition at Pierce College this quarter. It’s a compact introduction to the work’s themes and to why you might hear me open in Irish even when the pieces don’t include the language yet. Think of it as a map; the sculptures are the terrain. I created the video to help provide context for my work, in case I am unable to attend the artist talk in later September, as I will be recovering from a major surgery planned for early September.
Why I open in Irish (Gaeilge)
I don’t yet use Gaeilge directly in the pieces, but I speak it here to name two threads that anchor my practice: colonialism and cultural erasure. Irish, the Indigenous language of Ireland, and is currently listed as an endangered language by UNSECO. It has survived despite 800 years of British colonial suppression through families, communities, and stubborn love. But yet it remains largely a second language for most Irish citizens, and remains at risk of becoming a dead language. Starting in Irish is my way of saying: this work is about what gets silenced, what persists, and what we choose to carry forward. I am learning to speak as Gaeilge, and beginning to incorporate that into my work, as a way to honor my ancestors and help protect this important marker of Irish culture.
Glass as a language of memory and repair
Glass is my medium because it already speaks the contradictions I’m after:
It’s transparent and weight-bearing.
It’s fragile and resilient.
It breaks, and it can be mended, and still hold light.
In an Irish context, glass is devotional and domestic at once: think stained glass coloring sacred space and cut crystal on the kitchen table. I tap that lineage while treating glass as a body, heated, cooled, stressed, annealed, material that remembers what it has been through.
The body at the center: fat, femme, sovereign
My work centers my fat, femme body, not as a problem to be solved, but as presence, lineage, and care. In older Irish stories and stonework, powerful female forms show up everywhere: figures like the Sheela-na-Gig and the Morrígan point to ideas of fertility, sovereignty, war, warning, protection, and transformation. Over time, colonization and respectability politics taught us to fear those bodies and to shame their power. In addition, the history of the Irish Famine, and the ways in which long term starvation can create generational trauma and even manifest in epigentic changes.
Diaspora: distance, change, and what we keep
As part of the Irish diaspora, I make from a place shaped by distance, change, and time. Diaspora asks: What do we keep when we’re far from home? What returns when we invite it? My practice is a small act of return, gathering fragments (language, craft, symbols, stories) and fusing them into a present tense. Sometimes the seam shows. That’s the point.
How these threads intersect in the studio
Identity is the through-line. Irishness, fatness, womanhood, held together in glass.
Form follows body. Vessels and apertures echo skin, belly, nipple, mouth, sites of nourishment, breath, and voice.
Repair is visible. Cold-worked seams, joins, and edges aren’t hidden; they testify.
Everyday + sacred. Domestic silhouettes lean into ritual; ritual objects enter the kitchen light.
My practice is ultimately about belonging to a body, to a culture, to a story that outlives shame. Glass lets me hold contradiction without breaking the thread: vulnerability and strength, rupture and repair, diaspora and return. If you spend time with the work, I hope you feel permission to bring your own body, and its history, into the light it holds.
Go raibh maith agaibh, thank you for reading. If you have questions or reflections, I’d love to hear them.
