Emma Baker

Email:ebakerglass@gmail.com

Website:http://www.emmabakerglass.com

Region:South West England

Technique:Cold work, Hot glass, Kiln work

Occupation:Artist, Trade and Industry

Discipline:Decorative, Design, Sculptural

Areas of Interest:Exhibition, Networking, Techniques

Product:Commission, Design/ Functional/ interiors, Sculptural, Sculpture

Country:United Kingdom

County:Somerset

Emma has worked with glass for over ten years, initially encountering the material whilst studying Applied Arts at Bournemouth University, she received her BA(hons) from Sunderland University in 2014. Her passion for learning and understanding the material has driven her to work with an abundance of glassmakers in a variety of locations. In 2019 she became one of two Associate Artists at North Lands Creative, a two-year programme supporting & developing the practice of glass artists. She spent 2020 living and working in Bergen, Norway keeping the furnace alight at S12 Galleri og Verksted, an incredible experience that Emma describes as a pivotal point in her life and career. In the summer of 2022, the United Nations’ year of glass, she was invited by the National Glas Museum in Leerdam, Holland for an international glass exchange to create work that is now held in their public collection.

Specialising in blown glass, my practice has always explored a curiosity around memories and the events we experience throughout life. How can a memory fill us with feelings of euphoria & excitement at the same time as loneliness & sadness? The emotions we experience surely have a weighting on the creation of our memories.

The Torsion series is a technical exploration born from my time as a teaching assistant on James Maskrey’s master class at Bild-Werk Frauenau in Germany in May 2016. Whilst developing my technical abilities and skill, I found that the walls of a blown glass vessel would ripple and buckle when subjected to an imbalance of either heat or thicknesses. The works created now, seven years on, are the culmination of the technical journey to handcraft a glass cylinder without the use of moulds or formers, alongside demonstrating understanding and control of the material to encourage the specific folding of the vessel wall.