Romson Regarde Bustillo

To make hard soft, 2025

Mixed media site specific installation of blown and sandblasted glass with textiles

Variable dimensions

Presented by J. Rinehart Gallery, Booth C09

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To make hard soft considers and examines references that intersect continuum or parallel circumstances, where hybridity, practiced hierarchies, violence, joy, migrations, culture détente, beliefs, and acceptance alternate proximities. The installation continues my investigation on our presumed capacity to hold multiple ideas, including contradictory concepts, while considering our proximity to intended meanings.   

Tradition(s)—repeated truths, and revolutionary—evolving truths, both play out in my work. I let these components interact/collide/integrate. This contributes to a world view and processes that together complement, expand, and, at times oppose. By populating my art with coded and identifiable references, my intention is to provoke dialogue.  

My current work with glass is tied to research on primary and secondary burial practices, as well as burial goods, of pre-Abrahamic, pre-colonial Philippines and Southeast Asia. I also reference ancient burial practices from various regions across the globe. Excavations of ancient jar burial sites include locations in India, Taiwan, Japan, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, and Egypt, among others. The care for, rituals surrounding, and need to memorialize the dead are defining aspects of the human condition. Burial vessels and tombs—both natural and built—tell stories. In turn, a culture’s regard for, or desecration of, the dead of others offers a picture of its moral landscape.  

Above are patadyongs/malongs, multipurpose tubular garments that represent what is carried generationally, intuitively, and through knowledge transfer. They hold past, present, and future memories.  

Glass works were realized with support of residencies at the Museum of Glass and Pilchuck Glass School.