Mai Orsted

Context

'My recent work has been concerned with the free blown sculptural form using colour to underline shape whilst working with traditional cutting methods to add deep relief texture and refractive quality to the piece. Sculpted hot glass has also been added to surfaces of clean forms to enhance their shape and refractive properties.

Creative development

The creative tensions which inevitably exist between technique and inspiration are my main drive in any new work.  Technique and ideas fundamentally depend upon one another and the problem solving that takes place in realizing a project involves repeated trips from drawing board to the workshop and back.

I want this light project to generate a major shift in the way I work both technically and creatively.  As such it is a creative journey of technical research where the aim is to integrate form and line with colour and texture.

I will be working with surface structure, adding textural and tactile dimensions to soft organic shapes.  This journey will result in the making of a family of chandeliers with taut and brilliantly sparkling surfaces.

The nature of making hot glass; blown, sculpted or cut is fundamentally connected to the flow of the making and therefore the time invested in preparation for each piece in order to succeed.

Some pieces are already planned out to the last detail in the surface and others will evolve in the making – made by the rhythm and experience of working with hot glass, work that is driven by skill, intuition and instinct.

My goal is to make these pieces stunningly beautiful, shiny and alive without being glitzy.

These new ideas stems from a constant curiosity and urge to try new ways of expression.  The pieces are, when created, the realisation of a vague image of seen beauty assembled as a carefully made jigsaw.

In this new body of work I want to be loyal to the primary in the material, for the glass to appear for what it is, runny like water and shiny and brittle as ice. It's going back to the fact that glass is a super-cooled liquid and the resemblance to water and ice is therefore natural.

The expense of experimentation and promoting new work is always quite substantial but never the less the only way to grow as an artist.'