Leah Kudel

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Leah Kudel, “The space between myself and I,” 2016

blown glass and photograph, 54” x 24” x 24” (photo by Joe Kelly)

The space between two people can be energetically charged. Some people create a bristling barricade to keep themselves safe, while others melt warmly into shared space in open embrace, seeking love, comfort and joy. 

But what about one’s space with oneself? 

That’s a question that Leah Kudel, a glass blower and former reality show star, explores with her hanging glass vessel, The space between myself and I. The work, an imprint of her body, seems almost like the external carapace of a lobster or crab. But it also features a mirror image of her body that she can study when she’s wearing it.

“The glass, in one way, acts as a container of space and as a landscape of my body,” says Kudel, whose exhibition, The Spaces Between, is on view at the Alberta Craft Gallery in Edmonton until Feb. 29.

“It can also read as a barrier of sorts. When I made this piece, I was thinking about the idea of looking directly at myself. What would that space between ‘us’ contain? Would it be full of loving thoughts towards myself? Doubts? Thoughts of failures? Thoughts of thankfulness? That space can often contain so very much.”

To make it, she and a team of other glassblowers laid a large bubble of molten glass against a plaster cast of her body. The work is in the collection of a Danish glass museum, but a photograph of her wearing it is on display in Edmonton. 

Kudel was a contestant on the first season of Blown Away, a Canadian reality show featuring glass blowers that aired in 2019 on Netflix. The show saw 10 contestants compete in various challenges for $60,000 in prizes and a residency at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. She finished sixth, and remembers the experience as a mix of fun and stress.

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Leah Kudel, “Unlanded,” 2017

blown glass and photograph, 16” x 12” x 12” (photo by Logan Groupé)

She has been a glass blower for almost a decade, her interest sparked by a weeklong workshop she took on a whim at Red Deer College. She fell in love with glass, partly because it requires athleticism. “It’s the sport of craft,” she says. She also admits to a lifelong fascination with fire. 

She earned a Bachelor’s degree in glass at the Alberta College of Art and Design, now the Alberta University of the Arts, in Calgary, graduating in 2015. She then worked and exhibited internationally, before returning to Alberta last year. She is now building a glass-blowing studio in her Edmonton backyard.

Other works in the show include Unlanded, which tries to capture the energetic sensation of being unanchored from the ground, as when travelling from place to place. There’s also Let’s Not, a piece that holds space between two people exploring relationship, but holding off on full physical intimacy. 

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Leah Kudel, “Let’s Not,” 2018

blown glass and photograph, 13” x 13” x 8” (photo by Christin Lappan)

“We all have our reasons for not having sex with someone,” says Kudel. “Maybe you just aren’t ready to have sex with them, maybe you’ve been hurt before, maybe you are waiting for marriage – the reasons are endless. However, the tension, the emotions, the over thinking and everything contained in that space between our bodies, doesn’t always decrease with a decision to not have sex.”

Kudel says she originally started working with space when she noticed how the places someone occupied before their death – a favourite chair, perhaps – become charged by their absence.

"I started with this idea that the absence of something almost makes it more highlighted, almost a little more tangible," she says. "Then I moved on to this idea: What are other spaces I can highlight to talk about different things." ■

The Spaces Between is on view at the Alberta Craft Gallery in Edmonton from Jan. 18 to Feb. 29, 2020. 

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