Last month I visited Manchester Art Gallery for an inspirational research trip ... looking at light and angles, geometry and staircases.
Manchester Art Gallery
Never mind the Art, look at all those stairs!!
Found Art, my husband calls it - and he's right - I can find inspiration anywhere!
As ever, I took many photos of the stairs - holding my phone down the stairwell, hanging over the railings, looking up, looking down ... each one captured my imagination in some way.
Back in the studio, having chosen one of the photos I started to develop the design. This is a slow thoughtful process for me - I rarely get sudden flashes of genius 😁 but instead I slowly develop my ideas until I can look at the black and white design and say "I really want to make that!"
I knew I wanted to create a new glass roundel to add to the collection - I think these large round glass artworks are really powerful - so re-thinking the rectangular structure into a circle was the first challenge!
Starting with pencil, then moving onto vector software, once the black and white version was perfect I used Photoshop to colour in the pattern.
Then using scrap glass pieces, I filled in the pattern with real art glass - while I can get a good idea of the colours using a computer, they don't represent real glass that well.
Choosing glass for "Stairs"
Using real glass also means I can see if I have the right balance of transparent and opaque glass - and it helps me know what art glass to order. I don't keep a big stock of glass - I like to buy just what I want at the time I want it!
Once I'd chosen all the art glass colours, I printed out the patterm template on my Cricut ... and now it's starting to come to life!
This video shows all the production stages to date.
I post these production videos regularly on my Instagram account - do follow me if you'd like to see more!
I'm aiming to finish this work in May - if you'd like to get an email saying when it's ready for sale, please subscribe using the form at the very bottom of this page in the footer.
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