Member’s Spotlight

Shannon Baker

The culmination of my BA project has resulted in my final collection ‘Love as a Homesickness’ comprised of a blown glass goblet, cup and dish. The project is an attempt to physicalise the internal self into the external, into objects. The work considers notions of autobiography and personal life experiences as a young woman.

The glass has been made with and manipulated by bronze tools cast from my body, such as: my finger prosthetic tools, teeth tools and more abstractly, claw tools cast from the inner self. The bronze tools work as an extension of the self and are used in place of traditional glassmaking hot shop tools.

The collection is solely comprised of functional-ware this is due to a focus on the uncanny in domesticity and the everyday. Although uneasy, the objects are all fully functional. The work is a comment on the extreme burden of womanhood and its intrinsic link to ideas of the mother and motherhood, and unbefitting domesticity, often leading one to feel out of place; questioning sanity.