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Estuary Arts gets reflective this month, with its exhibition Focus on Glass taking over the gallery spaces from October 5-29.
The show features more than 50 individual artists and makers, and demonstrates the huge variety of methods and styles that can be achieved with glass – the work ranges from flameworked, silvered, engraved and leadlight to cast and blown glass. More than 100 pieces of glass art will be on display.
Over the course of the exhibition there will be opportunity for the public to vote for their favourite and the winner will be announced at the end of the exhibition.
Two local artists whose work is in the exhibition are Gillian Jones and Toni Tittleton, both of Stanmore Bay.
Gillian says her glass work has taken over her garage – “you start in a corner, and just keep going,” she says. Her enthusiasm for glass began in 2016 with a one day course at Estuary Arts Centre, making glass beads.
“I then did a couple of casting courses and fell into fusing,” she says.
Luckily, she bought a kiln just before the first lockdown.
“I got some scrap glass and taught myself to fuse glass,” she says. “It was a lot of experimenting and copious accidents, but mistakes show you another element you might not have considered and you can always smash it up and start again. It totally saved my sanity in the lockdown.”
Fusing involves designing, then cutting the glass and fusing the pieces together – a process which takes about seven hours at different temperatures. Then you can ‘slump’ it, turning it into bowls and shapes.
Gillian is in her 60s and had previously done a bit of silver smithing and painting.
“But there was nothing I loved as much as this. It has taken over my life. It proves you’re never too old for new things.”
At 30 years of age, Toni Tittleton already has more than 10 years’ experience as a glass artist behind her.
She graduated from studying glass art production in Wanganui at the age of 20 and tried various forms of glass art before settling on casting.
Casting is a way to make sculptural forms from glass – works that Toni has in the exhibition were made first in wax, and then cast into glass.
Her studio, Tittleton Glass, is on her parents’ farm in Waitakere, but she also has an art space in her home.
As well as creating work, she manages retail art design stores and is secretary for the NZ Society of Artists in Glass.
She says glass needs to be promoted more as an exciting art form, with some great work being made in NZ.
It can be a challenging medium, with many steps and at any time something can go wrong. A power cut while she had work in her kiln once, cracked every piece. The raw material is also expensive and can be difficult to source.
Get it right though, and it can shine, with colours and translucence like nothing else.
“There really is nothing like it,” Toni says.
