Where Science and Art Meet - the Story so far!
"I am fascinated by glass - by its ability to transform itself from a solid to a liquid and back to a solid again! For me it is the endless fascination of where science and art meet."
My works are handmade from glass using kiln and torch techniques. My Medical laboratory background directly influences my artistic processes as does my love of colour, pattern and different world cultures. I am also inspired by English literature, family history, and the joy of dance.
Whilst glass is highly fascinating - it is also a hugely challenging medium that can have a high percentage of failures. And yet ironically, it is this challenge that keeps me coming back again - for it is never boring and there is always so much to learn!
I love my job! And I am passionate about what I do!
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My glass story started when I was young - my mum was an artistic painter, a lover of science and also very craft oriented. My Dad was interested in the world and reading and would also make things. I loved reading and making things and most of all - just doing stuff and being busy. My first job (way back in the mid eighties!) was as an apprentice in Medical Laboratory Technology. I loved science - especially biology - and a long time before the industry was mechanised - I got to play with test tubes, petri dishes, glass slides and pipettes - measuring and mixing liquids and chemicals, and spending a lot of time looking down a microscope!
Fast forward through the next 22 years by which time I had done a three year OE, and studied and worked in the other loves of my life - English Literature and Design. After arriving at the door of my first Mosaic workshop I was eventually led to a mosaic conference in Hobart, Tasmania. It was here that I heard a presentation by a sculptor who made life sized birds - some with a wing span of 5 metres in length - and each wing was decorated with kilnformed glass feathers!
I was fascinated and hooked - and after ten years my fascination has not ended! Glass encompasses my love of science and art - it is the junction where both loves meet!