Member’s Spotlight

Michelle Ryan

My art practice explores our relationship to nature and one another through sculpture and print. Lifestyles, in the western world, have separated us from nature and making by hand, while recent global events highlight the benefits these have to us.
These themes are explored primarily though kiln-formed glass techniques including pâte de verre (glass paste), lost wax casting, photography and print methodologies. Source material often reference historical objects from previous generations of my family or ideas generated on my daily nature walks.
The making process is time consuming and is often fraught due to the complexities of the material. Considerable skills and knowledge need to be amassed with an acceptance that you do not have full control over the outcome. The works use a familiar everyday material to represent forms not normally experienced in glass allowing the viewer to question the object and its meaning.
The process of translating an idea into glass is technically challenging and stimulating. Glass is a contradictory material. It can be both ephemeral and permanent, fragile and heavy, delicate and sharp and can pivot from transparent to opaque. It holds the possibility of literal and metaphorical magnification.