Besom

Shown at Staple Goods Collective Nov 8 - Dec 7 2025

These besoms, and their shadows, are evidence of unseen labor. They’re proof of our capacity for fluidity, that we are constantly imagining new approaches to self- and community- stewardship. Brooms prompt the consideration: what does this object cleanse? There is plenty to scrub and tend at this time; recognizing the pleasure in caring is a tool for survival.  

I investigated besoms by repeatedly manipulating their shapes in glass using kiln heat. The process revealed formal and functional connections between brooms and books. Both are vessels. They are objects of stewardship that release and contain. Both tools tend society; both are constructed by binding individual parts together. In relinquishing the distinction between books and brooms, I find myself reading the release-and-become pattern throughout nature, particularly in plant matter, mineral deposits, and fire. Smoke is a besom. Breath is a besom. The food we ingest, medicine we brew, and sound we create, all of these sweep energy through us. Our bodies are brooms. 

I extend the definition of vessel to objects that demonstrate action and agency. Brooms have been derogatorily connected with witchcraft and women’s bodies and capabilities. The vessels in this show are mutable and transformative. Their dynamic decay (a) loosens my dependence on binary thinking, (b) suggests preservation can be antithetical to grace, (c) affirms the quantum veil. 

As a child, it was my job to sweep the kitchen floor each day. My father taught me to angle the broom down so I wouldn’t kick up dust. It was an unfinished plywood floor, never fully clean. Sweeping the glass studio floor is also endless— the daily task is ritual tending, community care. It is a simple focusing of attention that offers me joy. When someone steps in my piles, it means I am caring for shared space— this too brings me pleasure. Brooms remind us that everyday tasks are ceremonial, that the sacred and the mundane are one in the same.

 

Some of these works can be found in my shop. To curate or collect works from this exhibit, please contact caitlin@caitlinwaugh.com