Author Interview: Dr. Erin E. O’Connor on Craft and Creativity

In this interview, we delve into the creative journey of Dr. Erin E. O’Connor, whose latest work, Fire Craft, offers a unique perspective on the art of glassblowing through the lens of personal experience and embodied knowledge. Dr. O’Connor reflects on her family legacy of makers and artists, discussing how her early influences shaped her understanding of craft. With insights that explore the intersection of art and identity, the lessons learned through failure, and the often-overlooked role of breath in craft practices, she invites readers to reconsider their own connections to the material world. As a researcher and maker, her passion for glassblowing transcends mere technique, revealing deeper social, political, and environmental implications. Join us as we explore the transformative power of craft through the eyes of Dr. O’Connor, an advocate for the vital role of artistic practice in contemporary society.

But first, who is Dr. Erin E. O’Connor?

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• Fire Craft begins from a very personal place, with your own history of making and your family’s connection to art and craft. How did those early experiences shape the way you approached glassblowing as both a researcher and a maker?

I grew up in a family of practical and pragmatic doers, artists, makers, and entrepreneurs. A graduate school colleague presented me with a postcard that had three of my great-grandfather’s paintings on the front. He, Frederick Papsdof, was a Detroit artist and my colleague was studying Detroit artists for the class. I assumed the postcard was from the mid-twentieth century – my family did not know about the contemporary life of his paintings beyond an occasional eBay sale – but when I flipped it over, I saw that it was for an exhibition the following month. It was 2003. Seeing his work live beyond him and beyond any of us – artwork that was a side gig to his regular 9-5 – inspired me to delve into my creative practice to understand the social and political importance of craft, creativity, and making.

• What was the most surprising thing about the bodily experience of glassblowing?

Heat. Fire. Gravity. Centrifugal and centripetal forces. Essentially, the movement and responsiveness of glass. When you’re blowing glass, the glass records your movement. This doesn’t always present a pretty picture. You want to be cool and collected, but you may actually be nervous and chaotic. When working with hot glass, I have to do my best to calm and settle my own body. Hot glass reveals the body in ways that other practices can ignore.

• Failure plays a major role in the learning process, especially in the moments where the glass does not become what the maker intended. How did failure change your understanding of craft and skill?

“Failing” in glassblowing is par for the course. Even the most proficient glassblowers express what they could have done differently after finishing a piece.  Practically speaking, failing is a wonderful opportunity to be guided by the material rather than by your own thoughts about or intentions for the glass. It also was an opportunity to queer theories of embodied knowledge. What if the process of learning didn’t add up to identity with the conventional goal? In this way, I was able to develop my thought on heat, fire, and intracorporeality.

• The book explores embodied knowledge, or the kind of knowledge that lives in the body rather than only in the mind. How would you explain that idea to readers who may not be familiar with academic language?

In one hyphenated word, embodied knowledge is “know-how”. It’s that knack that you have for doing something. Moreover, you have it and improve it by doing it. To ride a bike, you have to ride a bike. When you’re riding the bike, you’re not actually touching the pavement, but you can feel it through the bike tires. That extension of the body through a tool is embodiment. Knowing through such extension is embodied knowledge. It applies to all tools, prostheses, and related items.

• Breath is central to glassblowing, yet it is easy to overlook because so much attention goes to the hands and tools. Why was breath such an important part of the book for you?

The emphasis on bodies and doing at the expense of the breath in theories of craft and embodied knowledge mirrors modern American culture. Commodities, for example, proliferate American culture, whereas knowledge about the stuff that makes them or how they are made is less accessible. Talking about the breath makes visible the “invisible” and taken-for-granted power of the breath in any glass object. Theoretically, this draws from a feminist perspective, notably that of Luce Irigaray.

• Many people think of craft as something old-fashioned or separate from modern life. After writing this book, how do you see craft’s place in the contemporary world?

Craft offers a way of relating to the world and with others. Full stop. Vocational education is important in this regard. Craft is part of what we are doing – even in the “craft” of computer programming. Glassblowing in particular is important as it offers a way to understanding minerals, chemistry, the labor systems of their extraction, and teamwork. This means combining a study of glassmaking with glassblowing. This seems imperative to me in context of today’s environmental mandates. Ceramics, painting, metalwork, and woodworking – these are all wonderful ways to understand contemporary political economy, geopolitics, and environmental issues.

• Did you always know the book would include such personal material, or did that emerge during the writing process?

Thank you for this question. I assume it refers to the chapter, Materia Erotica, which describes a romantic relationship. The short answer is, No. It was not part of my dissertation and only later emerged through my writing process. In large part, this was due to my ongoing exploration of heat and fire and my turn from traditional toward queer phenomenology. In what ways, I wondered is the logic of production in the hotshop “straight”?  How did this intersect with heteronormativity in the hotshop? I had been engaged to a man and I am a bisexual woman. What if, theoretically, I followed the queer logic of heat and fire instead of the straight logic of making stuff? I explored “love” and “erotics” as ways of making, thinking, and relating. As my ideas about making expanded into a material erotics, it became apparent that I had to tell the story of my own experience of love in the hotshop.

• Since glassblowing is such a visual and physical craft, what challenges did you face in translating it into words?

It was a pleasure. I’ve described the world through words since I can remember. I love to translate the art of glassblowing into words. There is the risk of non-glassblowing readers getting lost in the details. To prevent this, I often include typical practices from similar contexts – like campfires or cooking.  

• Were there any moments in the hotshop that changed the direction of your research or made you rethink what the book was really about?

My class with Hattie was paradigm-shifting. It was a woman-led course with experimentation at its core that changed both the way that I made and wrote. When I saw her spin hot glass from a drill and then pour it from a giant ladder, my mind was blown. In her class, I did all this experimentation, pouring glass into an old tree stump – this isn’t in the book. But it was this work – all these silvery pieces that my partner and I called “wasp glass forest” – that laid the groundwork for my eventual queer and feminist approaches to embodied knowledge.  

• After spending so much time with glassblowing as a practice, a community, and a way of thinking, what do you hope readers will notice differently about craft, art, or their own relationship with the material world?

Ultimately, I’d like people to value craftwork as an important tool of social, political, and environmental life. It’s less about “talent” than a mode of relating and relation.