My Glass Journey

As a child I remember our local ‘glass animal man’ and wondering how do you even learn to do that? It wasn’t until 2007 when I found a very basic glass beadmaking kit that I began my journey into glass. I soon moved into borosilicate glass (‘Pyrex’ is the commonly known trade-name for this type of glass) as it has such greater transparency and a unique palette because of the high metal content needed to create the colours. At that time there were very few people using coloured ‘boro’ in the uk, so supplies were hard to find – at that time there were only three companies making boro colour, all in the USA – and knowledge even harder. It took a lot of trial and error, adapting traditional Italian ‘soft’ glass techniques, hunting down books and info on-line, with a few rare opportunities to learn from visiting American glass artists.

 Today with an explosion of new makers, mostly in the underground cannabis pipe scene, and world renown UK glass beadmakers we have a wealth of UK based suppliers and interest in flameworking.

 For me I am drawn to the immediacy it brings, it so much more ‘hands on’ than, say, fusing as you are directly changing and controlling the glass. Although flamework rarely can make the scale of traditional furnace work I prefer the greater detail that it brings, and that you don’t need a team of people to organise so its easier to concentrate on my own individual vision when creating.

Most of my work centres around my more counter-culture interests in space, scifi, fantasy, alternative music, plus my own geeky fascination with science and growing odd plants. This has lead me to exhibiting my work at comic-cons where I meet people who wouldn’t normally visit galleries, and who appreciate the underlying themes exploring alien life as a way of showing the fragility, diversity and strangeness of life that has developed on our own planet.