IC:Innovative Craft Blog

A glass act – IC’s inaugural lecture

Posted Thursday 11 September 2008, 02:52pm

We were delighted to host our inaugural lecture at Dovecot last week:

Ann Wolff and Christopher Burns

Transparencies – Glass in Architecture

4 September at the Dovecot Studios

The South Gallery space was transformed through the addition of some simple corrugated paper blinds and some chairs hired from Andrew Wilson into a very practical, small lecture room. WarPro hired us the projection equipment and patiently set it up as we transferred the lectures from the artists’ sophisticated but incompatible laptops to my clearly very idiosyncratic old Sony which made all the architectural images look cropped. Some 30 attendees including glass makers, artists, architects and general visitors joined us for a glass of pink Prosecco and a very stimulating talk (see Alison McConachie’s comment below). The general buzz of conversation afterwards demonstrated the positive response to the talks, which combined confident presentation, clarity of thought and inspiring images. Thank you to all concerned.

Alison McConachie writes:

‘These combined presentations gave a rare insight into an architect’s vision for a building as an ever-changing multi-layered 3D canvas and how this has created a dynamic living and working environment for the artist Ann Wolff.

I have a great deal of respect for the many ways in which Ann Wolff uses glass in a most expressive way. I responded very much to what she said about the inherent beauty of glass and the need to go beyond what can be a barrier to make it work for you as a medium. I enjoyed her description of the ambiguity of glass and its ability to deceive the eye. She celebrated the versatility of glass, as compared with the canvas, as one can always go back to the previous layers that combine to create the whole picture.

The cast works that she showed were lovely examples of her ability to capture the gestural movement of her instinctive drawings in a very natural way, drawing with line and form but also with the control of colour density through the varying thicknesses of the glass to great effect.

Alison McConachie
eca glass