BIOGRAPHY
Josiah McElheny is an expert glassblower whose installations, sculpture, paintings and films engage with the history of his medium and the history of ideas, with particular interest in the fields of literature, architecture, music theory, and astronomy. His works often combine glass, or mirror with other materials, to emphasize the importance of the act of looking “as a subject in and of itself.” He has received numerous awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship, The 15th Rakow Commission at The Corning Museum of Glass and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. McElheny has exhibited widely, including selected solo exhibitions at Cantor Art Center at Stanford University, Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, Houston, and Madison Square Park, New York.
COURSES TAUGHT
McElheny was on campus from January 25 to February 2, 2024. He conducted six individual critiques with M.F.A. candidates, and gave a public lecture on Thursday, February 1. His seminar explored the cross-disciplinary foundations of his recent work. The first seminar meeting was co-taught with composer and UC Davis professor Pablo Ortiz and discusses two examples of how sculpture and music can be combined, focusing on McElheny’s latest paintings that produce sound, which were a collaboration with composer David Grubbs. The second class explored McElheny’s installation, Island Universe, which is based on Stanford University Professor Andrei Linde’s “multiverse theory.” Through a discussion between astrophysicist Andy Albrecht and Josiah McElheny, the second seminar meeting considers whether the theories around Cosmology in astrophysics have sociological implications. In addition to his seminar, McElheny hosted a conversation in the UC Davis Mathematics Department on with mathematicians Roger Casals and Jesús De Loeras discussing whether Geometry can be a tool, or a diagram, to imagine a communal future. McElheny will present elements of his recent exhibition, Geometries for an Imagined Future, and how the works propose thinking about possibility. Professors Casals and De Loeras discussed their interpretation, and clarifications, of the geometric concepts in these works, from polyhedra to the magical triaxial ellipsoid.
PUBLIC LECTURE
Photo Credit: Josiah McElheny, From the Library of Doubles II, 2022, Hand-blown, cut, polished, and mirrored glass; low-iron mirror and two-way mirror, electric light; walnut frame, 24 7/8” x 67” x 22 1/2”.