JESI YAGER

From the first time I took a gather of glass in 2013, I have known that this is what I am on this earth to do. Since then I have apprenticed with four glass workers in Vermont, attended a residency at Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Maine, started a mobile glass studio in California, taught glass sculpting workshops in New Mexico, and started my MFA in Craft with a focus in glassblowing in Calgary, AB, Canada.

I am drawn to glass as a medium because the process is a meditative blend of science and magic. Like meditation it is a practice that demands focus, finding center, awareness of breath, and the ability to let go of every thought beyond the task at hand. My analytical brain is satisfied by the methodical building of steps, repetition, experimentation, and the required attention to detail. My aesthetic brain is satiated by the beauty of light and color in a finished piece, and the interplay of fluidity and fragility as equally important characteristics of the material.

For three years (2021-2024) I was virtually immobilized by pain due to Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) in my left foot. My life was reduced to sitting by the window watching the birds and a constant parade of medical appointments where I was subjected to increasingly invasive treatments that kept failing. In January 2024 I began to have vascular complications that eventually led to amputation. I woke up after surgery out of pain for the first time in years, and burst back to life. Without pain I could sleep, play, laugh, and remember how to dream big dreams for myself. Within weeks I was bouncing around a ninja warrior training gym, paddle boarding, surfing, and skydiving. I traveled without pain for the first time since before Covid. I fell in love. I went on road trips. I applied to graduate school in Canada and managed to move and start school within a week of my acceptance.

My current work is an exploration of all that has led me here–of triumph and struggle, of pain and joy, of finding wholeness through limb loss, of resilience and survival. My research is an exploration of the simultaneity of seemingly contradictory qualities of the human experience. I am conceptually rooted in the tensions, resonance and complexities of “both-and” dynamics of experience, emotion, and timelines. Through thematic pairings such as brokenness and wholeness, grief and joy, before and after, constraint and freedom, body-as-vessel and vessel-as-body, I use the dualistic nature of glass to explore the dialectics of resilience.