About

Glass Mountains is an ongoing archive/body of work by Sean McFarland (bio) that began in 2012. Individual works in the archive date from 1998 to the present, and into the future. 

“Glass Mountain is the highest point along the only transverse mountain range in the Eastern Sierra. The range is part of the Long Valley Caldera, which comprises lava domes, rhyolite, and obsidian flows. The summit of Glass is reminiscent of the alpine tundra summits of its western neighbors, but the views from Glass extend into the Great Basin and include the northern White Mountains, Mono and Crowley Lakes, the Adobe Valley, and the beautiful red rock walls of the roadless and rugged Dexter Canyon.”
- Glass Mountain by Jora Fogg https://friendsoftheinyo.org/pf/glass-mountain/

Working from a self-generated archive comprising tens of thousands of items, McFarland’s practice is a continuous revisiting of time, site, image, object, and experience. Materials such as silver gelatin prints, cyanotypes, drawings, rocks, desert sage dust, and glass are combined to make photographs, collage, books, videos, and sculpture. Glass Mountains is an investigation of the interplay, deep complexity, and beauty of the earth as a system, creating a place for us to think about how all is interconnected, including ourselves. The resulting works are at once a meditation on place, phenomena, what it means to be present and how we remember.

Glass, translucent and fragile. A mountain solid, withholding a view of the processes below that shape changes in geologic time.

Glass Mountains (gm) was first exhibited as a solo exhibition in 2013 at Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco. Subsequent solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Casemore Gallery, Paris Photo 2023, and the Visual Studies Workshop. Group exhibitions include the The Eastman Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Aperture. Artworks from Glass Mountains are in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, George Eastman Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, San Francisco Arts Commission / City and County of San Francisco, and Stanford University among other notable collections.

Key
Glass Mountains Archive 2012-ongoing
gm = glass mountains
gm.1 = glass mountains (chapter 1)
gm.e = glass mountains (echo)
gm.ls = glass mountains (lightning strike july 25, 2013)
gm.4.5byal = glass mountains (4.5 billion years a lifetime)
gm.afsa = glass mountains (alluvial fan, strange attractor)
gm.archive  = glass mountains (studio archive)