Doughnut (attempt) III

Fused car window glass, welded metal clamp

Harriet Bowman has always been interested in material: at age 12 she stitched leather as a sadler at a tannery, and this relationship to material later led her to glass. Growing up on a sheep farm in rural Devon, her experience of cars was formed early, by party hangouts and doing doughnuts in empty fields. She became aware of the gendered stereotype of car culture, but when her baby would only sleep in the car, it became a domestic extension of the home, a site for exploration back at the studio. Walking with her child during the 2020 lockdown, she noticed cars left roadside with cracked windscreens: not caused by a violent crash, but by an unfortunate flick of tarmac, a single entry point that cracks the whole screen. Bowman also began collecting glass found scattered on the pavement from opportunistic break-ins. She became interested in the beauty of residue, the process of removal and replacement, linking this to the body and its vulnerability to chance and accident. Doughnut (attempt) III comes from this residue, as the artist investigates its fluidity when hot and capacity to shatter when struck.