Much of my work is based around sci-fi; a genre that looks forward to how we might interact with changes to the way we live in the future. At the same time I am also fascinated by tropical botany, especially how plants have co-evolved with certain insects, birds & animals to create seemingly bizarre characteristics. Its hardly surprising these two different areas collided in my ‘Fauna & Flora or Ancient Mars’ series; showing how strange & intriguing life on this planet is by taking Earths niche lifeforms as a starting point to explore how life on other planets might evolve.
Up until 2016 this was an ongoing project where I created possible lifeforms, in glass, which I then mounted in box frames as though they were scientific specimens. I based them on microscopic creatures, sea-life, & paleontological specimens (especially the precambrian era!) reminding the viewer how rare & strange life on our own planet already is. Sadly alot of the photos of these were lost in a PC crash, these are a few lo-res pictures that I’ve manged to save. Ironically just after I created the ‘bucket of eyes’ creature I had to undergo emergency eye surgery, which greatly reduced the amount of work I could do until 2019. Although I’m now exploring new themes, I suspect a few aliens will still appear as I ‘discover’ them, and will return to expand on this project very soon
Click any of the photos bellow to see a larger view
This is by far the most exceptional glasswork I have — and it made it to W.Canada without problem! On my wall, it definitely looks like a specimen …. of some creature … probably not of this world. In the middle of the night, we’re all glad it’s kept safetly locked up in its glass box because at that time of night, my gut sense (that it’s a creature about to move) overrides my rational sense (that it’s ‘just’ an artwork). My cats look at it a little warily too; sometimes I catch them staring at it. In any case, we’ve come to love seeing ‘Clive’ every morning and every night. He’s weirdly adorable…and something of a talisman I think.
…(a month later)… I hadn’t noticed that ‘Clive’ appears in my
zoom/skype windows, but he’s become a social-distancing hit!
Diane, Canada
SteamPunkGlass 