Scratching the surface

2009 Ceramic peice "Beauty is Within"

Skulls, like pill bugs and armadillos conceal inner workings,  in humans it is not always obvious what is going on in the mind.  Abstraction allows for description with hidden meaning.  I took this picture at 23 Durley Dene but it was never actually intended to be outside but it kind of suits it I think, theres actually a deliberate crack in the side of it.  When you look in it there is glass and mirrors built inside to create a tardis effect, I simulated the trails that woodworm leave behind and sand blasted them out on the mirrors and painted them on white glass.  Inside the wood there is a light so that is like looking into a living, complicated thing... I had to have a bucket of help for making the ceramics it is pretty big, or as big as I could push it with crank clay.  I just wanted to push the boundaries of what is possible with my experience.

This is one of the windows I made for the Hobgoblin pub in Bath.  I remember the day when I went and kicked out the old ones, Roger the technician at the college couldn't really understand what was going on.  It was pretty funny.  Unfortunately I had left Bath before they got put in and they have vanished now.  I'm a bit reluctant to go in and ask in case they tell me that they are smashed to smithereens.  I prefer to believe that they have been snapped up by some Stained glass enthusiast!! There were two so looked a bit like a giant Nazi ss symbol, this was totally accidental the red glass in the middle is supposed to look like a crack, I think this would have been more obvious when they were installed. If anyone ever looks at this and realises they have a picture of these windows please send them on to me.

2010 Window, "Venus is a Trap"

This is from my first year at ECA.  I already had a firm footing in working with architectural glass so used the techniques I had learned before but tried to be a bit more methodical.  At this point I really didn't think I was going to stick with the flat stuff at all as I really enjoy working in the hot shop.  Blowing glass with Edinburgh Castle in the background takes craft to a whole new level for me.....not that you can't see the castle from the architectural room but theres just something about working together with people as a team that really appeals to me.  So I had to find a way to do both.

First attempts at the Graal overlay technique  with the amazing Ingrid 

When these were made in November 2011 scientists discovered the Higgs Bosun Particle to be real, it wasn't intentional but the pieces resembled computer illustrations of what was going on at CERN.  This was a lot to do with the fact that clumsiness had led to a collection of scratches , I enhanced them by sandblasting.  It was a fitting end to the project when I dropped them off with the client then walked round to the shops to discover this image on the cover of the guardian, maybe you don't see the similarities repeating patterns are not always identical.  Check it out at the end of this post.

Progression with graal, engraved, fused and  sandblasted

This doesn't make much sense as this is some of my latests experiments, at the end of my blog.  Using off cuts from  the graal process means that nothing gets wasted.  Here it has been diamond wheel engraved fused and sandblasted.  This has opened up a whole new way of working for me and some of my paintings that I'd once thought would be completely impossible to replicate in glass have resurfaced.  It just goes to show that whits fur you won't go by you!

Particle getting smashed into each other at CERN

This is pyreism.......