Archives: Artists
New Artists and reviews
The main focus of my artistic research is the exploration of the flexibility in my own thinking and re-evaluation of matters, related to human behavior: needs, habits, wishes, and hopes.
I aim to challenge the norms of human nature and society. I approach these topics through the exploration of both folk and modern cultures: the world of symbols, metaphors, proverbs and tales, expressing wisdom and morality.
I am constantly in search for analogies, interconnecting stories and plots. I see myself as a visual anthropologist of a modern-day time. I mainly use glass as my medium as I find it to have almost mysterious properties, such as transparency and visual illusions, thus it is a perfect material to make my ideas manifest. Glass is poignant in its delicateness but equally captivating in its strength.
Emergence was a collaboration with myself, Australian artist Mark Eliot and New Zealand Model Anita Springfield. Taking Da Vinci’s idea that the human body reflects nature’s design, we created Emergence. This work utilises a slumped glass human torso as a landscape, with a flame-worked forest that draws inspiration from the book, The Hidden Life of Trees. The work combines glass and pumice (volcanic rock).
A graduate of the Certificate III in Glass and Glazing (Designed Glazing) and a current student of the Diploma of Visual Arts (Glasswork) at Melbourne Polytechnic, My Imaginary Heart also teaches workshops in leadlight and copper foil technique. Their glass art installation “Sunflowers; repeating” is currently on view as part of the 2025 Grace: Women in Glass exhibition at the Australian Centre for Glass Design until September 27.
I continue to teach, challenge, and learn. My latest project I continue to use airbrushing, silk-screening, and penning techniques, but now I am using these processes on fused and slumped glass to make functional bowls.
Krista Israel (1975, The Netherlands) is an artist who explores the boundaries between the material and the immaterial through her mixed-media sculptures using glass. Her body of work invites reflection on vulnerability, safety, and transformation within our contemporary society. Israel’s “glass fur” – thousands of thin glass threads that appear sharp but are surprisingly soft – symbolizes this paradoxical interplay of protection and fragility. Her pieces range from playful animals to hybrid beings, intertwining humor with existential themes. Glass serves as a medium to capture the fluidity of experience, memory, and perception. Light, reflection, and refraction open a window to deeper, both personal and collective, truths. Israel’s work not only displays visual power but also the philosophical depth that characterizes her sculptures. She confronts the viewer with the fragility and beauty of existence and challenges us to reconsider the everyday as a living, meaningful experience. Her sculptures offer a perspective on the everyday and create space for dialogue about contemporary life.
Peter has begun to work with glowing powders to add another dimension to his traditional and modern designs.