Water and glass weave their courses through my life and work - watery, indigo-blue copper oxide bubbles make an appearance in nearly every panel I create - and recently I've been literally taking my glass process to the water.
There's a stream that rises in the fields above my house and studio, threading across the yard down the track and meeting the unnamed stream tumbling down the valley. This in turn meets the Esgair, on to the Bargoed and eventually into the Teifi, the beautiful silvery line that runs from Llyn Teifi to Poppit. Lines of watery life linking me across the landscape, veins of life.
Cutting the glass to size, I take it to the stream and wash the surface with the water, ready to take the copper oxide. Inky blackness flowing across the panel, dripping rivulets meeting and crossing, twisting and turning, finding the edge, the sea. I'm always amazed that the heat of the kiln - up to 800 degrees C - transforms this darkness to a sparkling spread of bubbles, entranced by fine lines of tiny time capsules scattered through the glass.
I'm trying to link up my love of landscape, rivers and glass, to discover ways I can use it to engender a love of landscape in others, a love of rivers, an increased awareness of how we should be treating them. Rivers are alive. They demand our respect.
I've just finished reading the long-awaited new book from Robert Macfarlane 'Is a River Alive?' and feel the urge to reread it already. He writes: 'Our rivers are now tightly bound by logics of objectification and extraction. Strong forces will be required to release older, more complex river-meanings from their impoundment - and to reanimate our relationship with these vast, mysterious presences whose landscapes we share.' We need to widen our concept of relatedness so that it encompasses all life, only then can we truly understand our place within it.
The Tywi in Carmarthenshire now has its own group of heroes Achub Y Tywi, and The Cleddau Project is looking out for a vast swathe of Pembrokeshire.
Join us! Look after our rivers. Oh, and look out for pieces from my new watery series in Origin!
