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Glass is my medium. I model it in the fire of a lampwork torch and fuse it in a kiln, and work it cold afterwards. I combine it with metal: silver for the jewelry pieces or copper for larger works. Glass is a wonderful medium! It can transmit light or reflect it, can be transparent, translucent (like opals) or opaque. The colors and shapes it can take are seemingly endless. I just can’t get enough of it. I’m always looking for, repeating patterns in nature like cell structures, basic shapes, silhouettes, archetypes in myths, in art from various cultures... As a child I kept “nature books”, notebooks filled with all sorts of treasures I discovered in the garden, on expeditions to nearby parks in Antwerp where I lived or at the Belgian seaside. But the best treasures I found in the woods and lakes of Switzerland where my family went on holiday almost every summer. Back then I was convinced I was doing important scientific work, glueing dinosaur pictures found in biscuit packages and pressing flowers and tree leaves... Writing down when and where I saw wild animals, things I saw through my kid’s microscope and analyzing my treasure of crystals, and fossils... Fast forward 20 years and I still keep track of my nature discoveries, only now I do it through my creations. Other influences come from my studies in musicology and Eastern cultures. And Monty Python. Just a tiny bit... ;-) |
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