What Is a Glass Light Sculpture? Exploring Colour, Glass and Light
Glass and light have a natural relationship. Glass can transmit, reflect and transform light, while colour changes according to its intensity, surroundings and the position of the viewer.
My glass light sculptures developed from an interest in exploring these qualities through multiple layers of painted and fired glass combined with LED light.
Painting With Glass and Light
Each sculpture is constructed from individual layers of glass that I paint and fire in a kiln. The painted surfaces are then assembled so that light passes through several layers simultaneously.
Rather than illuminating a single image, the LED light travels through the different painted surfaces, allowing colours and forms to overlap and interact. Areas that appear opaque from one position can become transparent from another, while colours intensify or change as the viewer moves around the work.
This creates a sense of depth that would be impossible to achieve on a single painted surface.
Spectroscopic Continuum
My Spectroscopic Continuum series explores the relationship between colour, landscape and perception through painted and fired glass and light.
Landscape is often the starting point, but the finished sculptures are not intended to describe a particular place. I use colour, abstraction and layered imagery to create environments that shift between something recognisable and something imagined.
Light is not simply used to illuminate the sculpture. It becomes part of the material of the work itself.
A Changing Artwork
One of the qualities I find most interesting about working with glass and light is that the artwork is never entirely static.
Natural light, artificial light and the viewer’s position all affect the way the layers are perceived. Reflections appear and disappear, colours overlap and the space between the individual sheets of glass becomes part of the image.
For me, glass light sculpture provides a way of bringing together painting, sculpture, colour and light within a single work.
