My most recent recent collection is based on exploring grief, loss and memento mori. The inevitability of death, coupled with the recent global pandemic have illustrated painfully for many including me that life is fleeting and death is certain.
I have stablished a new enterprise of glass fusing courses working at taster and beginner levels across the West Midlands.
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Glass is a material like no other. It is only enlived by light, is imagined as fragile but takes great heat to change it. For me it the ideal media to show invisiable concepts such as emotions, or tell stories or express concerns in new unexpected ways. My work is as diverse, images gather in my subconcious & link together to form unexpected connections reflecting themes that interest me – science, technology, space, botany – to things that trouble me – emotional trauma, mental health, ecology & fractures in society.
I work directly in the flame with borosilicate glass (more commonly known by the ‘Pyrex’ tradename.) I have a diverse, but often science & fantasy led, portfolio of work. I am currently experimenting with plasma sculptures where I create hollow forms which are filled with rare gases that are energised by high voltages to create moving ribbons of light inside. Along with an ever popular range of dip pens, marbles & pendants I am also working on new sculptural figurative work around mental health issues, and expanding my sculptures from wall hangings to garden displays
I am currently working with broken and reconstructed glass fragments and light projection.
Some of my recent work includes:
-The Tonntracha Chandelier, commissioned by a private client for their London home. Made up of over 300 individually lampworked components, laser cut acrylic fittings this piece was designed to show of the optical beauty of glass, whilst giving energetic movement to the room.
-Flop Lights ii & iii were selected and exhibited recently as part of Rising Stars 2021 in the New Ashgate Gallery in Farnham. Made up of over 1300 individually lampworked components, these pieces came together in a flexible framework that aims to challenge peoples’s perception that glass is ‘too fragile’.
-Flop Lights ii & iii have also just been selected for the National Glass Centre Glass Prize 2021.
-Research features heavily in my practice. I have spoken at conferences in UWE, Making Futures and the Glass Art Society Conference. In 2020 I published my first paper in the renouned Making Futures Journal https://makingfutures.pca.ac.uk/journal/laura-quinn
After almost a year of struggling to make life and art normal, I started thinking about what makes me happy.
Besides my family, of course, are fabrics.
I’ve been surrounded by fabrics all my childhood since my father was a tailor.
He passed away very young, so for me, making fabrics out of glass is a way to keep him with me.
I wanted to give the glass the movement, softness, and qualities of the fabric.
The way I achieve that is by making multiple firings for each piece, so the glass falls and folds on itself.
After each firing I position the glass differently to achieve the movement I want.
I am a glassblower, beekeeper and conservationist, I combine my passions by infusing the honey gathered from my native Welsh Black bees into my glass. I started glassblowing again in 2019 and in 2020 set up my Studio, Liverpool Bay Hotshop, during Lockdown, in the Northern Lights, in the heart of Liverpool’s cultural quarter, the Baltic Triangle. In addition to creating my Honey Infused glass art I run glassblowing courses and studio hire.
I am a fused glass artist and will make anything to order, no order to small or too big
Living right on the coast, the sea and ocean life is often my inspiration, whether it be water or marine life based. A recent request from a local restaurant for Mackerels started me on a path of studying our local sustainable fish and sea life and reproducing them in Glass. Giant flowers are also another of my favourites as is anything I can make with all the excess glass I have from my weekly workshops!