Sweetbitter (I didn’t know desire could feel like this), explores queer experiences of love, desire, growth and joy, through glass vessels reminiscent of vases and flowers. The work considers the artist’s evolving relationship to desire and love, following those experiences feeling inaccessible and uncomfortable during her youth. The organic shapes in bubbled glass attempt to capture the movement of glass in its molten form, and the emotive tension of the glass blowing processes.

Drawing on the theory of Queer Temporality, Sweetbitter (I didn’t know desire could feel like this) reckons with the emotional impact of having authentic experiences later in life. The work celebrates queer joy, personal experiences freed from their past discomfort, while also acknowledging the grief of missing out on these formative experiences earlier on, or having them weighed down by discomfort. This duality is considered through the open, coloured glass vessel, and its accompanying clear, twisted and closed off pieces, that echo the shape of the vessel, except instead of being open to holding flowers, they turn into an idealised and imagined glass flower.