Glowing Grief by Colleen RJC Bratton

July 12 - August 17, 2025

Artist Exhibition Statement

This past year, there has been so much death in my own small sphere and in the complicated, larger world. The grief reverberates within our bodies, pinging and illuminating the full extent of our capacity to love. 

I can still feel my cat’s wet nose on my arm when I’m half asleep.
I can still feel my grandmother’s courage in my chest.
Their light echoes months, years, decades later. The love still burns.

The dusk acts as a soothing salve, a metaphor and conduit. In the summer months, my eyes yearn to see the kindred noctilucent cloud. These cold blue clouds are the highest possible in our atmosphere. Composed of ice crystals that form around the remnants of disintegrated meteors, the natural phenomena reflect the light of the sun for hours after the day has ended. They remind me of the muscles, bones and chasms that hold those that have passed. 

These landscapes: human, celestial, earthen, water tell of a material mourning. The dredging of the Duwamish for industry as disastrous pollution. The decline of tree canopy as hot spots in urban areas. The use of pesticides makes for a rapid decline in bee population. Hope and healing can be found in facing this grief and offering it movement: carving the fallen cedar into a watering hole for bees, witnessing the grass grow taller where Scout is buried, or holding the seawater as it evaporates into the sky.

Glowing Grief presents the forms from these lamenting movements. These sculptures and installations give weight to these realities, enshrining memory and charged material in slowed decaying form.