Molly Burke & Byproduct Studios interview July 2025

Can you tell us about the history of your personal exposure to art? How did you first become interested? Did any artists or works inspire you to pursue becoming an artist as your practice develop over time? What keeps you making?

Molly: My mom always took us to art museums and out into nature, and I was always interested in art as a kid. When I was very little, I would often make little things out of dirt and mud pies outside. In upper elementary and middle school, I enjoyed crafting, including working with beads, making bracelets, and embroidery. And then, in high school, I was greatly influenced by taking ceramics classes and advanced art classes. I became really passionate about it, and my teacher recommended that I attend a summer workshop at the Columbus College of Art and Design. And I took that workshop. I think that really made me feel comfortable about pursuing art school. And I just kind of always fell into that as a making practice, or just always leaning on that.

Are there any artists that inspired you to become an artist?

Molly: It sounds kind of boring, but I saw the Chihuly exhibit when I was in middle school or upper years of elementary school, and it was really amazing. It was at the Dayton Art Museum, and honestly, I didn't think about this until I had already started working with glass later on in college. 

I think one of the reasons I continue to be an artist is that it's very challenging to have an art career and a family. In high school, we had a ceramics class and I became really interested in working with ceramics and carving clay. I literally took a vase with me on a plane that I was hand-carving, and somehow protected it all the way through, finishing the work all the way from Ohio to Florida and back. We still have the vase at home. 

Ceramics was a meditative way of making and working that was really soothing to me, in a way that, like, kept me grounded. My dad had passed away when I was in middle school from cancer. I do think that art making was a refuge for me, and I continue to this day. 

Some artists that influence me now that are more conceptually or aesthetically aligned, such as Beth Lipman, Do Ho Suh, Tara Donovan, Jeanne-Claude and Christo, and Aurora Robson. 

What does your current creative process look like? Do you work better by planning before executing ideas, in the moment, etc. How and do you make your work?

Molly: A lot of the work that I make for exhibitions is specifically collaborative work, and so there is a combination of planning with that, but then also leading into spontaneity and the flow of the artistic practice. Paying attention to what's working and not working, and being comfortable with having a dialogue with my collaborator about what we should focus on next and how we should shift the project. I think it's interesting that when we have done drawings and preliminary sketches, and we don't have the drawings taped and in front of us, but when we go back to look at what we've made, it is strangely accurate to the preliminary sketch. 

Nathan: Yeah. So it feels like the sketches are just more generative, something to be replicated.

Molly: Is that what you would describe our practice as? 

Nathan: Yeah, well, I mean, if you planned, and once we do the actual thing, it's not like every piece and every part is like predetermined. It's like this section is going to get filled with rhinestones, and that's what we do. And so that part's kind of automatic.

Molly: I work in two different ways. When I'm working with glass, I have a scheduled time in the hot shop, and I've hired an assistant to work alongside me. This is because many hot glass techniques require the assistance of an assistant. It's almost a requirement to do a lot of the work you want to create in a facility. When I'm working on other pieces that are sculptural or assemblages, we work together as a collaborative effort. And at other times, we take care of parts separately. Sometimes, Nate is off building components that are fabricated for the pieces we're making. And then other times, I'm making certain parts. However, what we prefer is when we can work together on the pieces simultaneously, and that's ideal, because it allows for a dialogue and camaraderie, as well as getting into a state of flow while working.

What materials do you use in your art making practice?

Molly: We use a combination of materials. The primary material I work with is usually glass. We also use plaster, wax, and silicone. It's a dominant feature. a lot of reclaimed materials, craft supplies. I like to lean into the kitsch. I also think that, for me, leaning into craft supplies and memorabilia is also a little bit like leaning into nostalgia and my own personal history. Crafting is actually how I got into art making. I was very skilled at embroidery, which I believe is a component of our current work. We also intentionally use glass, including our waterjet-cut sheet glass, as well as tile and construction materials.

What activities make up your studio, practice?

Nathan: Primarily studio practice, seeing, some sketching, certainly planning, depending on the complexity of the piece, smaller things, less planning is required, obviously. Although complexity doesn't necessarily have to do with size. For example, the pieces that we just did at Ramona those were complex because we hadn't done them before, and the pieces themselves were time-based. The timing was crucial for how the pieces fit together, so we had to plan that out.

Molly: We had to be thoughtful about placement for the structural integrity of the plaster, like which parts you wanted to stay intact as much as possible. That actually required a lot of planning and revising after each piece because we had to learn from the material.

Nathan: We do make prototypes. I would say that we do a fair amount of experimenting as well, because, honestly, we use a lot of different processes in our work. Every time we introduce a new process or style, we must conduct some experiments. So we usually run experiments. We have failed experiments, and we remake them into artwork.

Molly: I had a fun conversation with one of my former faculty members, who's an emeritus now, and he told me to do a test - And then I asked if he did tests… He goes, “Well, if it doesn't work the first time, it's a test.” So, I do think we have a lot of tests, and some of them become finals, but I also think we've been creating artwork for so long that the failure rate is pretty low, and we have a good idea of how the end result will turn out. 

I think because we're collaborative, we often engage in conversation when we're together and aren't able to create artwork about our interests. While some people engage in journaling or writing in sketchbooks, many of our influences stem from our conversations and thoughts about the things we are involved with on a daily basis. We are very influenced by our lives. In terms of parenting and teaching, both of us are in positions where we navigate and mentor young adults as they work through the artistic process, or simply guide individuals as they pursue their creative endeavors. 

Additionally, what we read and listen to also influences us. I listen to a lot of material related to sociology, psychology, and education, and I think that influences my work.

Nathan: When we create our new exhibition pieces, the process seems rapid in the studio.

Molly: Yeah, I think that's where a lot of the planning comes into play. We'll discuss the materials we may need to acquire, and I'll work on gathering those. Then, we'll determine if any structures need to be built beforehand. We then look at the exhibition deadline and work backwards from it, as we have children and need to schedule intense art-making sessions. We either have my mom come watch the kids, or Nate’s parents will stay with us for a couple of days so that we can actually get a solid eight-hour chunk in the studio at a time. They're like kind of mini-intense work periods.

What subjects or ideas run through your career? What about your personal narrative connects you to your current materials and body of work?

I feel that the subject matter that frequently surfaces relates to being parents and also being consumers. I think there are many different subjects that we touch on, but the primary ones involve dealing with contemporary culture, specifically as it relates to being parents and the material conditions of being parents, the dialogue of consumerism, and the value of objects. Essentially, we have a lot of inexpensive, fast objects, but we also have a desire not to have too many things. But we also, I think, Nate and I both have a very maximalist aesthetic, so we actually are okay and comfortable with a lot of objects in our space, and so that kind of comes forward in our artwork. But I think it can also become very overwhelming at times. 

So there's kind of this beautiful, ugly situation that happens, and I think that's kind of how I feel about life at the moment. It is very stressful to think about the fact that we're shaping human beings, not just as parents, but also as educators. And I think that gives me a lot of I think about that a lot, like, that's something that's been on my mind quite a bit, like, about what are we making and creating, and what are we putting out there in the world, and also, what are we consuming, so on and so forth. So I think that, like, there's a little bit of a struggle and tension in the artwork.