When talking with Filipina artist Goldie Poblador, it is clear that the New York-based glassblower sees the fun in her work. Poblador’s Barbae show in Makati culture hub WHYNoT Manila saw her partner with cocktail bar Big Fuzz to create a multisensory show involving feminine shot glasses, bespoke drinks, and “scent rooms” where specific smells altered the tastes of our drinks.
“The scent you’re smelling in this room is cherry — isn’t it naughty?” Poblador asked our drinking circle with a sly tone. She held up her shot glass, which she designed to have a “nice” hole and a “naughty” hole, shaped to resemble the folds of a vulva (complete with a bright green bean). There’s a cheekiness to the way Poblador approaches her art as if to say, “You’re laughing, but remember this is serious stuff.”
Poblador returns to Manila for Art Fair Philippines 2025 to present The Rise of Medusa, an exhibit responding to the oil spills in Batangas’ Verde Island Passage. The show delves into the resilience of marine life permanently impacted by the spills while exploring themes of ecology and femininity. Poblador’s immersive presentation engages the visual, olfactory, and auditory senses, offering a multi-sensory experience for viewers.
“You’ve caught me at a good time,” says Poblador as we discuss her upcoming show. While she has exhibited her work internationally and made history as the first Filipino artist acquired by the prestigious Corning Museum of Glass, Poblador still speaks with an air of humility, as if she was just starting out. “Like, a really good time, right before we get into things. We’ve started painting the venue, and we’ve rehearsed. Hopefully we pull it off.”
In this interview, Poblador shares her takes on the impact of multisensory experiences, the male-dominated industry of glass blowing, and what she hopes people take away from her show at this year’s Art Fair Philippines.
Her Beginnings With Multisensory Art
“I started in 2009, with my undergraduate thesis at the College of Fine Arts in the University of the Philippines (UP). It was also the same year that Typhoon Ondoy hit the Philippines. I was living in Marikina at my lola’s house and when Ondoy hit, we were extremely flooded. I found myself affected by the change. I saw all the trash: it was in the trees, in the electric poles, in our gardens. It was all gone. And it smelled horrible. There were janitor fish everywhere. It felt like an apocalypse.”
“I wanted to work with the idea of losing your memories. I had grown up in Marikina and I felt it had changed so drastically because of something that could have been prevented. This was also the same year SM Marikina was built and [SM] had drenched the river to build the mall on top of the river. So this didn’t help, and maybe that was why the water was at such a high level. I felt like there was no concern from the government.”
“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if my work dealt with scent?’ Because scent is our most connected sense — it’s connected straight to the part of our brains that holds memory. I made this ironic perfume bar that would display these scents as perfumes, but I wanted the perfumes to smell like rotten eggs. I remember making a perfume called “Squalor,” which had the smell of the Pasig River, like polluted water. My other perfumes smelled like city streets, like urine.”
“That was my first ever scent project. And you know, it was the first time I branched out to glass — in order to make my own perfume bottles, I wondered if I could do that myself. And I did.”
Maestros of Glass
“I learned from a scientific glass blower who serviced the universities of Katipunan. It was a scientific glass blowing shop that was located next to a UP Ikot Jeep stop in Katipunan, and it was in the backroom of a salon.”
“My first teacher’s name was Aniseto de Castro, and he learned in America. He was an American Scientific Glass Blowing Society member, and he encouraged me to leave the Philippines because there wasn’t a place to learn more here.”
“That’s why I’ve been gone all these years — to learn the technique. My first stop on my journey was Murano in Venice, which historically was the center of glass. But when I got there, they told me it was a craft for men. Women were originally not allowed to learn. Women do learn now, but it’s still rare.”
“Glassblowers in Murano typically study for around fifteen years before they’re regarded as maestros of glass. That’s usually when they’re around 50 years old. Which, I guess is why glass blowers in the 15th century were considered as aristocracy, by sheer virtue of what they knew. Because they were learning secrets, right? They spent their lives learning this technique and it allowed them to marry into royal families.”
“I rent [a studio now] at Brooklyn Glass in New York and I teach sometimes there, and I see a lot of women getting into glass blowing now. They’re really amazing to be doing this — I’m so glad we were not alive during the 15th century.”
On Being A Working Artist
“I’ve always supplemented my income with other jobs. Being a Filipino in New York, you just have to — everything’s so expensive, and whatever I earn I put back into my materials. That’s why I sell my Barbae collection, my sculptures, my glass rings. At the end of the day, I want to do this full-time and be the best version of myself that I can be. I think it’s lucky that, year after year, I can still do this.”
“Also, living in [New York] sharpens you because all the best people try their hand there. Like, you think you’re working hard, but the next person probably has five jobs when you only have two! Do better, and don’t complain. Part of living in New York has been challenging, and I used to be ashamed of that. But now, I don’t care anymore. I think I’ve healed my relationship with that and accepted that, ‘Okay, I failed. But all my hardships, they’re all in my work.’”
Takeaways
“I hope people walk away from my work with a sense of wonder. I mean, I’ve let it go, I used to be really firm and be like, ‘Oh, my work is about this.’ And I still hope people see my show and pay attention to the diversity of Verde Island and ecology and femininity. But I think I’ve stopped trying to get them to see that. It’s not my business if they don’t get a sense of it.”
“It’s about how companies now prioritize selling oil while refusing to see how they affect the entire planet. But at the same time, it’s about this idea of Medusa, this goddess of the sea and of death, and of female energy and rebirth after something devastating has happened. I hope somehow… I hope people see that. And I’ve worked with so many amazing people like [sound composer] Ben Richter, [filmmaker] Erwin Romulo, [interdisciplinary artist] Arvin Nogueras, and [scent artist] M Dougherty. I hate to dictate what people take away in terms of a ‘message,’ but I still hope the message gets to them.”
