The Responsibility of Time:
A Handbag's Narrative

Some objects, though they leave your grasp, never truly depart. The handbag is one such object: carried close to the body's warmth, it gathers fragments of time and weathers the gaze of society upon a woman.

Thus, the artist Jen Blazina turns to glass to tell their story anew. This is not merely a change of material, but an act of gentle salvation, softly anchoring those fleeting moments.

She says, "I am not reproducing objects; I am preserving a 'time that was once held'".

Consider the designs spanning the 1920s through the 1980s. They are not merely footnotes to fashion, but traces of a history gently etched upon women. At times a stylish armor, sometimes a silent constraint, and other times a door left slightly ajar, leading elsewhere.

Glass, therefore, becomes the most honest medium. It is hard, yet fragile; transparent, yet unrevealing. Quietly carrying form, and also silence, much like a woman's life itself: always seen, yet seldom fully understood.

Jen's glass handbags do not need to be opened. They have already bared themselves to the light, standing tall, refracting, murmuring, holding neither lipstick nor keys, but rather fluid time, names not yet whispered, and answers that reality continuously reshapes.

They exist as they are. Without need of validation, already whole.

Jen Blazina

Jen Blazina is a mixed-media artist whose practice intertwines sculpture, printmaking, and photography to explore memory, loss, and the fragility of time. Based in Philadelphia, she works between the disciplines of craft and conceptual art, transforming the language of materials into vessels of remembrance.

In her studio, she employs printmaking, kiln casting, mold making, and cold working—techniques that allow her to translate ephemeral memories into enduring forms. Glass, bronze, wax, and paper become metaphors for the human condition: glass for its transparency and delicacy, bronze for its permanence and weight, paper for its vulnerability to touch and time. Each cast or print carries the ghost of its original object, a trace of what once was.

Her works often begin with found or inherited objects—furniture, personal keepsakes, or photographs—that hold the residue of lived experience. Through meticulous casting and layering, she reimagines these artifacts, merging image and form to create sculptural narratives that reflect both personal and collective histories. The surfaces of her pieces bear the marks of process—scratches, seams, and imperfections that echo the ways memory is fractured, reassembled, and transformed.

Blazina's work invites viewers into a quiet dialogue about loss and preservation. By reconstructing the familiar through the labor of making, she exposes the tension between material permanence and emotional impermanence. Her studio becomes a site of excavation and translation, where forgotten stories are unearthed, recast, and given new form.

Her artwork has been exhibited internationally and is held in numerous museum, gallery, and private collections.

Founder and Pioneer of Contemporary Chinese LIULI art
Former Honorary Professor at the Glass Art Studio at Tsinghua University
Honorary Professor at Notojima Glass Art Museum in Ishikawa Prefecture
Honorary Professor at Centre International du Verre et Arts Plastiques (CIRVA) in Marseille, France
Guest Instructor at The Studio at Corning Museum of Glass
Founder of LIULI CHINA MUSEUM Shanghai
Noted performing artist in Taiwanese cinema
Two-time recipient of the Best Actress Award at the Golden Horse Awards
Best Actress Award recipient at the Asia Pacific Film Festival

An acclaimed actor in the 70s and lauded by both the Golden Horse Awards and Asia Pacific Film Festival, Loretta H. Yang extended her talent for the arts into contemporary glass in 1987. Her work is considered the apogee of Asian cast glass and can be found in eminent museums around the world including the V&A in London and Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Your Handbag Story

From functionality to personal style,
from a mere accessory to a distinct category of fashion,
the status and structure of handbags reflect women's self-expression across different eras.

For women, handbags are mutually defining.
Jen Blazina's glass handbags, like fragments in a kaleidoscope, capture fleeting highlights of a moment
— memories that shimmer and transform when revisited.

What are your handbag stories?
We invite you to share them in our dedicated space.
Come to the Glass Art Museum and leave your own handbag memory behind.