portfolio feb06-feb08

>>Thank goodness I am not rereading this now, as I would surely not publish it, but this is the text for the portfolio introduction for NCAD, while comtemplating a return to my home town.

We have here Five promontory pieces and companion pieces hoping to express two themes. And how my thoughts progress through blind intuition onto a satisfying thing.

I feel very lucky to be so touched by my upbringing, jobs and travels. When open to the creative process influences and intuition surge. From the immediate environment and the less reported external environment, chemistry and structure, physics and scale, the power of words, the power of food, belief, colour, light. Many cultures many interpretations. Life
gives and takes endless hope. And experienced, working craftspeople, valuable wisdom.

Rather like hydrocarbons permutations of scale, material, structure, environ ment, assembly and especially location, change the worth almost infinity

Intake of light, output of light, reflectivity, reflections and projections colour form and presence emanate and affect mood and sense of being, to not say sense of the host- environment´s being.

Theme A is Names that are not what they are.
To give the example military intelligence is tired like the public at large is to hear how it doesn´t.
So, I look with my eyes and see: jewish bacon, chemical structure, a metal glass structure, animals, happy birthday, healthy food. To get an idea.
In the end it is not what the name pretends.

Theme B is Beauty. The hope, Science is natural, Nature is beautiful.
So concepting Science and Nature and Humanity give beauty, dependent perhaps on the humanity.
Adjectives abound, words are not enough.
Honing the craft and increasing understanding give me belief (in god/humanity).

5B "Window glass garden
Fused, enamelled recycled glass. In twin bathrooms, 90x15cm each.
All green like the jungle.
Transparent yet obscuring, protecting view for all parties.
A commission, this fed of its location of an architectural house in a jungle environment. The importance of this matching was valuably learnt.



Companion pieces show cellular life and flowers from paper to glass.

>>ufe, that wasn´t half the story. The red landscape came from the sweepings from off the floor of the stained glass workshops at FCVB stuck together with that wonderful resin from Germany. I love this one, upside dow, back to front, different lights...

The long window curtains, the sweepings from the atelier of Rossana Gobbi. Glass vandal extraordinaire, difficult and endearing, a definite influence.

This glass curtain installation was for a very lovely old lady who needed help in her house with her arquitect´s vision for crotch height bathroom windows. They really grabbed attention and coloured up a plain space while gratefully leaving a little more to the imagination for people who might happen to look in.

4A "Organ vases"
Off-hand blown. Pair, 20x20cm approx. each.
Not the musical glass instruments I yearn for.
Forms and patterns inspired by the inside of the body.

Companion pieces intuitive sketches and development. (Plenty of growth hoped for).

Necklaces

3B "Necklaces"
Lampworked jewellery. 140cm
Nature, nature and nature wherever I go shouts out to me.
Silent Colour. Big, long, heavy.

Companion pieces show paper to glass how to overall colour is made of many parts.

>>There was a lot of this going on for me in 06, ufe fun times on the torch, what seemed like an ternity when I wasn´t.

2B "Xicot de luz" -light boy.
Modern glass laminating technique. 120x 40 cm
Childlike size colour and moving parts beg interaction.
Erratically sawn edges polished smooth to touch make it is startling yet endearing.
Aims of innocence, violent harmony.

Companions pieces show a child´s head, different materials colours and forms yet the same qualities.

>>This glassboy is in the care of Casa Mike where it stands for peoples enjoyment and interaction. I am very happy for that ;)


These are the original terrible texts I wrote at the last minute for a portfolio in february 2008. It was for showing the best, most cohesive examples of the different paths I´d been down in glass work. And stipulated that I had completed between feb06 and feb08. So terrible where the texts the next day after spending a night exhusted with rewrites I removed them before printing, hoping the images would explain themselves. The white page showing reflections and influences, the language, i was going to say "labuage", of the title piece on the black page. Well, I think the photo set up in the printed book did a good job by itself. Here in a blog however there is more hunger for text, a substitute for not living the pieces in real life, for having to put up with my shaky photography.)

This text is for the photos in the first entry below, dec08.
o1A "suneats city"
Traditional lead Stained glass technique, 90x 45cm
One of tryptic panel that read "eat think rememer" in the cityscape.
Wavy transparent cathedral glass, the apparent emptiness of space, full of seeds and striations.
Green grisalle, fecund land depth as far as the eye can see,
yet obscured
Yellow screen print enamel, grains of sand dot out and "amg odyu oare godI" and occasionally combine. A mantra, proven valuable.
Coloured cathedral, deep blue sea, also the waves from the sun penetrating space and the earth.
A cause of life and death.
Companion pieces playfully thought of as being scaled up to colossal size.