Artwork
Craft
Nature
#Andrea Spencer
#glass
#sculpture
#sea
“Mariner’s Story.” All pictures © Andrea Spencer, shared with permission
Whereas a seaweed referred to as bladderwrack won’t sound like one thing you’d wish to eat, the distinctive kelp is in truth fairly tasty and will get its title from small air pockets in its leaves akin to tiny bladders. For glass artist Andrea Spencer, the tendrils, bulbs, fronds, and combos of organisms present the start line for an ongoing sequence of stylish sculptures.
Simply inland of the rugged North Antrim shoreline in Northern Eire, Spencer and her husband, glassblower Scott Benefield, work in studios arrange in outbuildings of a former farm. “My course of normally begins with amassing or recalling one thing seen or discovered within the pure world,” Spencer says. “This turns into some extent of departure, and I proceed by manipulating and remodeling the fabric: creating, assembling, and arranging types.” Again in her studio, she shows the objects she’s collected by suspending or pinning them into layered compositions and capturing them in drawings or glass.
Spencer first took an interest within the medium throughout a two-year program centered on constructed textiles, when her analysis led her towards stained glass. She turned enthralled by the work of John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens, and he or she traveled round England to doc as a lot of their work as she might discover. The artist then enrolled within the Architectural Glass program on the College of Edinburgh earlier than shifting to Northern Eire and devoting time to studio work as a lot as potential.
Element of “Flotsam and Jetsam.” Picture by Studio David Pauley
The problem of portraying reasonable botanicals is matched by Spencer’s curiosity in bodily fragility. “I’m intrigued with how the fabric behaves when it’s pushed to the acute and the way glass will show the proof of that behaviour,” she says. “Typically the items I make are exceedingly fragile.” The partitions of hole types can generally be as skinny as an eggshell, and suspended items hold by glass threads lower than a millimeter thick.
“My items are greater than mere botanical or sea life fashions, although,” she says. Her sculptures usually take the type of flowers or foliage discovered on land, impressed by interactions with mild and conceptually linking nature to humanity. “Leaf veining remembers our personal circulatory system; a mermaid’s purse turns into a womb,” she says. “The fragility of the pure object aligns with the delicacy of the glass object, which speaks to the perilous elements of life typically.”
Spencer is presently centered on instructing, making ready work for forthcoming group reveals in London and Belfast and designing a customized glass decoration commissioned by a Royal institution. Keep watch over the artist’s web site and Instagram for updates, and buy items instantly from Benefield Spencer Glass Store.
“Siren’s Tune”
“Seaweed Bladderwrack”
“Seaweed Irish moss”
“The Shallows I”
“We the Drowned.” Picture by Simon Mills
Element of “We the Drowned.” Picture by Simon Mills
“The Shallows III”
#Andrea Spencer
#glass
#sculpture
#sea
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