Alluvium: Pipe Dreams
Thomas Glassford
During the 1990s, Thomas Glassford made a series of pieces exploring the cultural meaning and materiality of the gourd, an object of natural origins that is representative of Mexican folk culture.
Glassford’s gourd-interventions yielded artifacts that evoke their use as receptacles and flasks in ancient civilizations, and which emphasize their ambiguous resemblance—with shapes both phallic and voluptuous—to aspects of the human body. In Alluvium: Pipe Dreams, the gourd is depicted as detrital matter, or dreamlike residue, of its profound cultural and visual references, expressed by the contrast between metal and the gourd’s organic origins.
THOMAS GLASSFORD (1963)
Alluvium: Pipe Dreams, 1991
Gourds and nickel-plated brass
Acquisition, 2005
