Attempts at Coexistence emerged from a series of experimental sculptures created during the artist’s residency at Englewood Arts. With no prior experience in glassblowing, Stern was drawn to the medium’s fragility, danger, and symbolic potential. She worked with expert glassblowers in the studio on a series of tests, combining molten glass with rocks collected from Israel—objects imbued with cultural and political weight. Despite warnings that the materials were thermally incompatible, she persisted. Occasionally, under precise conditions, the two could be formed together—but more often, one of them would fracture.

Through trial and failure, Stern developed a fragile vocabulary of forms: glassy flows over solid stone, cracks held in tension, and changes in how light is refracted. The resulting series serves as an open-ended allegory: glass and stone can ultimately share space—but only if allowed to cool slowly, separately, on their own terms.

The sculptures offer no resolution. Instead, they ask what it takes for coexistence to hold—not as a metaphor, but as a material question, explored not through rhetoric but through action, patience, adaptability, and a problem-solving mindset.