FRAGILE THOUGHTS
(2018)
A hallmark of Brucker’s work is the combining of found objects and heirlooms with other materials—textiles, wood, glass, paper, text, and cast metals—to create works with a resonant poetic spirit and a tactile sensibility. In the large-scale installation, Fragile Thoughts, Brucker’s attention to detail and use of materials reveal narrative passages from her own family within individual works and invite the audience to relate to shared themes and stories. Photo credits: Kyle J Mickelson (Fragile Thoughts at Long Beach Museum of Art and Judson Studios) and James Fishburne (Fragile Thoughts at Forest Lawn Museum).
Created in 2018 for her 25-year survey at Long Beach Museum of Art, the project is a tribute to Elizabeth Milbank Anderson, an early twentieth century philanthropist who championed healthcare, education, women’s issues and the arts, and whose summer house (built in 1912) still stands on the LBMA campus. Fragile Thoughts particularly focuses on Elizabeth Milbank Anderson’s healthcare legacy.
For the installation, Brucker made multiple glass elements using various techniques in glass—from traditional painted or leaded glass, to fused glass. Glass as an inherently beautiful and fragile material reflects the artist’s ongoing exploration of the fragility of life and loss. These elements are embedded into antique chairs arranged in a circle, as if in conversation. Interesting is the word “glass” in English is derived from the Old French charité, from older charitet, from Latin caritas (gen. caritatis) (OED) meaning “to care.”
About the Chairs
Milbank Public Bath-Girl 1
Each chair depicts a child standing in the Milbank Public Baths from a Library of Congress photograph. The Milbank Public Baths provided individual warm-water bathing and was funded by Elizabeth Milbank Anderson in 1904 to replace the unsanitary floating baths used by residents of New York’s overcrowded cold-water tenements. Elizabeth Milbank understood that environmental factors were a prime cause of illness, which, in turn, was a major cause of poverty. The two girls face each other across the circle of chairs. Each was hand drawn and then painted onto rare red “flash-glass” where the red glass layer was partially removed by an etching process to reveal the clear glass underneath and then reproduced using vitreous paint. The chairs that were used for the red glass insertions belonged to the artist’s grandparents.
Milbank Public Bath-Girl 2
These chairs belonged to the artist’s grandparents. Each chair depicts a child standing in the Milbank Public Baths from a Library of Congress photograph. The Milbank Public Baths provided individual warm-water bathing and was funded by Elizabeth Milbank Anderson in 1904 to replace the unsanitary floating baths used by residents of New York’s overcrowded cold-water tenements. Elizabeth Milbank understood that environmental factors were a prime cause of illness, which, in turn, was a major cause of poverty. The two girls face each other across the circle of chairs. Each was hand drawn and then painted onto rare red “flash-glass” where the red glass layer was partially removed by an etching process to reveal the clear glass underneath and then reproduced using vitreous paint.
Tuberculosis and Diphtheria
Elizabeth Milbank Anderson was dedicated to providing care for those with tuberculosis and to the eradication of diphtheria. Diphtheria was characterized as the “Strangling Angel of Children” in the early twentieth century. This parlor chair has a clear antique glass seat with petri-dishes (fused glass) each mimicking the diseases.
Artifact Chair
This chair’s seat is delicately woven together using a technique in fused glass. The bone color and bandage-like weaving of the glass is meant to evoke the importance of medicine in Elizabeth Milbank Anderson’s pursuit to provide accessible healthcare to all.
“CURE”
A lightly colored amber glass circle is cut for the seat of this chair, with the word “cure” hand-painted onto the glass. This chair represents the desire of early Californians to find remedies for devastating disease. Note that the word is only partly illuminated by the light and pattern from the chair (a star).
Medal of Honor
This parlor chair features a hand-drawn portrait of Elizabeth Milbank Anderson that has been fused onto a glass oval. The glass portrait creates a kind of necklace or medallion as it hangs from the back of the chair using hand-dyed vintage ribbon. Notably, Elizabeth Milbank Anderson was awarded a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government.
Through a Glass Darkly
For this straight-backed chair, the artist created hand-painted glass samples in various amounts of transparency and assembled them together into a traditional leaded glass panel. The chair references a quote from 1 Corinthians 13:12 King James Version (KJV) “For now we see through a glass, darkly…” This quote is usually translated as referring to glass, though the real meaning is ambiguous, possibly referring to a mirror or lens where actual clarity of sight is obscured. Historically, this Biblical passage has been of interest to artists, posing the difficulties in representing what we do not see. Brucker feels that Elizabeth Milbank Anderson would have been proud of our medical advancements in curing disease but disappointed in our slow progress in addressing poverty and public health.
Collaboration with Judson Studios
The artist received an invitation to collaborate with historic Judson Studios of Pasadena, and was supported by a generous grant from Pasadena Art Alliance. Judson Studios is the oldest family-run stained glass studio in America. Brucker was mentored by Judson artists, Indre McCraw and Quentin Blackman, and also worked with Martin Valencia and Matt Phillips. Fragile Thoughts was also featured in the 2021 exhibition, “Judson Studios: Stained Glass from Gothic to Street Style” at Forest Lawn Museum; and at Judson Studios in Pasadena in 2019; as well as at the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation. The work has been featured in a number of press outlets such as the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine and Los Angeles Magazine.
