I am a glass artist and educator with 30 years’ experience and I feel incredibly fortunate to have made it this far as a maker of things who also works with the next generation of our making community. I specialise in mouth-blown glass, which has connected me to the world in a way that wouldn’t have seemed possible otherwise and it has been a profound experience. The outcome is part of an ongoing creative process, much of which is unseen by the viewer and has evolved during solitary moments when the imagination wanders or when collecting imagery, making in the hotshop and making doodles. The act of making is a performance for me and also very much part of what informs my creative practice. It is for this reason I am still learning and inventing. I see myself as an emerging artist and and established craftswoman, because my work has always been in collaboration with others. I have a long career in facilitating the creativity of others and during that time I have experienced a broad range of approaches to making glass art. I still make for other artists and historically, I have made work for fellow engravers. I am still up for this! Now it is my turn to show others what I like to make and what I want to express. My current work represents a beginning for me and a new way of expressing a journey ; it's a way of working that brings together the processes I love to work with, looking at graal and cameo as a way of expressing my love of mark-making, colour and illustration. Ideas are formed in response to current events, the role of women, an interaction with the natural world and combinations of all. I am also exploring a more sculptural approach and I am using some kiln-forming processes to provide new forms to engrave, reconstruct or re-imagine. Little Engines celebrates the life of an invisible yet vital world of creatures that I characterise and mostly invent. They hint at the microscopic foundations of who we are. I was inspired by the the writings of two female scientists who translated microbiology from a female perspective. They place us as caretakers rather than the dominant species above all other life. I am exploring many other approaches to making and other similar themes. I can't wait to share my work.

I engrave using the drill and a variety of burrs from diamond-coated to stone and rubber. I also carve and cut using sintered diamond wheels at the lathe and cut/scarify using a sintered-diamond wet saw. I mark-make using a variety of sharp tools and abrasives, too. I build transparent colour-blends, covering them in a thin layer of opaque glass, producing a cup or ‘blank’ to then work into once cooled. My process does move around, though. I carve into the rim and engrave across the surface removing glass, working through the opaque layer to reveal areas of colour and light. The cup or blank is then taken back into the hotshop to be given a new form or sometimes fire-polished, which will then be taken back to the coldshop to be given the final touches or further worked to continue the process back to the hotshop. Sometimes my process is open-ended this way to enable more experimental approaches to surface and form.