This is the first of my inspired by blog posts, drawing inspiration from colours, textures and shapes helps keep my work fresh, and takes me out of my comfort zone to develop new glass pieces.
Starting with Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens. This beautiful garden is right on my doorstep, I've been visiting on an annual season ticket since they opened and I love watching the growth and development.
On my last visit the weather was both sunny and moody, creating dramatic colour combinations which I wanted to try and recreate in glass. I especially loved the mix of greens and greys behind the bright red of the Red Stack by Shaikha Al Mazrou in the above picture. I made a little pile of beads with the palette and tumbled all but the red ones. I wouldn't normally think of working with this selection of colours, but I like it, as a simple necklace with a few beads, or a complete string of Mazrou meets Cornwall.
Another of my favourite sculptures is the Black Mound by David Nash, I wanted to play with a larger beaded piece based on this, but glass is so heavy it can get uncomfortable, so I made a few hollow beads in dark colours which I tumbled to echo the matte texture of the charred oak.
If you walk a little down the path from the Black Mound you come across one of the more subtle sculptures, Skhimza by Ken Gill. I liked the idea of chunky matte rock either side of a slice of bright transparent glass. The chunky called for more hollow beads, but this time I wanted it to look like textured granite, none of my ready-made rods of glass had quite the effect I wanted, so I melted a few different colours together to create a new rod. I made some bright transparent disc beads to go between them. I love the contrast is textures, not only in feel, but look too.
My last sculpture glass play was to make a tiny orange tactile pendant echoing Agent Orange by Tom Leaper.
I could revisit the gardens many times and come away with completely different ideas in different seasons, or focusing on the incredible planting instead of the man made. And I will, to add to my head and notebooks full of un-tried ideas!
Here is a pile of my glass inspired by Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens all together.
I've been spending this week trying out another one of those head ideas, it'll be a few weeks before they see the light of the internet, but I'm so excited about where they're taking me.
Aural company this week (apart from the Archers, sorry) has been the audiobook of The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes, I think I enjoyed it...
Tiddly pom.
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