Debbie Niichel LeBlanc Trajectories of Fragmentation

“I am obsessed with glass. I am obsessed with fragments. I have an irrational love of fire. I identify with alchemy. I collect obsessively. I loathe baubles. I desire them broken. Yet I love their pieces, They project new life and new meaning.

My show is an accumulation of these varied, yet related trajectories. For the past two years, I have systematically explored and rejected objects. I have attempted to classify them and limit them through cataloguing. I’ve tried to render the museless through casting. I have tried to infer the spiritual and mystical through ephemeral environments. I’ve placed them in installations. Ultimately the very essence of the glass has held my interest above all else. My work is a record of the sensory experience that played out when I undertook a pilgrimage to WestVirginia to trace where the fragments and shards I use originated. I wanted to know where these half broken objects came from. Whose hands touched them.What lives they lived before arriving at my studio.

Alchemy births kitsch, the sacred becomes mundane, and the broken becomes beautiful.”