Work with..... Glass, Light, Shadow

Bound to Break (2024)
Liquid Crystal Display (2023)
Window’s in Reverse (2018 - 2023)
Grind All You Want…. (2020 - 2021)
Reflecting Some Statistic (2020)
Intangible Objects (2013)

Bound to Break

Part of the Glass Runway Exhibition and Fashion Show. Presented at Craft NI June 2024 by the Glass Society of Ireland and the Council of Irish Fashion Designers.

A design centred around roses and concepts of restraint, bondage and BDSM. Seen as a symbol of extravagance and transience but also of traditional femininity, the glass roses are placed in padded silk cuffs; the cuffs are separated by glass rods, preventing them from doing anything practical. The artist is questioning whether women keep themselves in the role of submissive by hanging on to traditional ideas of the feminine. Is it time to shatter what binds them so beautifully, how do they do so without hurting themselves or others?

Materials: mixed fabric including digitally printed faux silk and eyelets, glass (lightbulbs and kiln formed), rose petals, thread, jump rings and glass beads; Bar - glass rods, steel, organza ribbons and faux velvet.

Model Photos by Glen Norwood Photography.

Photo: Glen Norwood Photography. Courtesy of CIFD and GSoI

Liquid Crystal Display

Temporary Salt Crystal Drawings on glass panels.

Glass is around us everyday but we usually look through it - through windows and through to whatever info is showing on our screens. Salt is a key component in various electrical and electrochemical processes due to it’s ability to dissociate into ions.

photo credits: Neal Campbell

Installed in Ards Arts Centre, May 2023. Photo Credit: Neal Campbell

Windows in Reverse

Flameworked glass line drawings.

As it says, window in reserve. playing with light and line and shadow. When installed in the gallery the piece changed over the course of the day as the shadows moved.

Made 2019 - 2021

Ards Arts Centre, May 2023. Photo Credit: Neal Campbell

Grind All You Want… It’s Still Spectacularly Fucked

Work about the massive effort we sometimes go to to preserve a system that is broken or to present the ‘utterly fucked’ as somehow still OK and correct.

Making these pieces used hours of labour and energy. Found glass was transported across the city, shattered with repeated hammer blows, then ground with diamond pads to frost one of the shattered sides. Black paint covered the whole piece which was then rubbed into each crack and groove ‘intaglio’ style with certain cracks picked out in silver leaf.

Liminal Belfast 2020. Photo Neal Campbell

Ards Arts Centre, 2023 . Photo Neal Campbell

Reflecting Some Statistic

Mirror Installation. Dimension Vary

Thinking about how you can shape and present data to discredit or support any argument depending on how you frame it. Made during the height of COVID19 when we all watched a grim daily update on deaths, cases, vaccines.

2020

At Ards Arts Centre, May 23. Photo Credit: Neal Campbell

Intangible Objects

Glass Clouds - Graduate work from NCAD 2013

This work explores ideas of the tangible and intangible through an exploration of cloud formations translated into delicate glass line sculptures. The shadows and reflections generated complete the work, resulting in a finished work both tangible and ephemeral.

The series was awarded the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland ‘Future Makers’ Student award in 2013. Selected piece are in private collections and others toured the country with various exhibitions including the RDS crafts Awards (2013), Sculpture in Context (2013), Solas (Glass Society of Ireland, 2014/15).

5 - Cirrus Cloud (side view - Detail) M.Mc.JPG