
In my very first blog post I made mention of the fact that I occasionally write short stories and engraved them onto glass objects. In fact from the late 1990's up to about 2009 this was the mainstay of my artistic practice. Last year, for an exhibition curated by the Contemporary Glass Society at Vessel Gallery in London I wrote a new story, inspired by a Facebook post by an old school friend in which he detailed how he met his wife. It was a strangely enjoyable thing to be writing stories again after such a long gap and since then I've been writing and stockpiling new stories as fast as I can. A selection of them will be exhibited in Osaka soon. In the meantime here is the story that was exhibited in London, titled Big Night Out and here is a new story titled Perfection. Enjoy...
Big Night Out
Twenty-two years ago I went out on a St. Patrick’s Day bender. There was Guinness by the bucket load (naturally). There was also a vast amount of Irish whisky. This sort of thing can lead to interesting situations. Inhibitions come down and you find yourself saying and doing things that might be considered wild, or at least wildly out of character. I ended up snogging a lass I’d fancied for years, I’d always been too scared to tell her how I felt. One wedding, two kids and three houses later, I'm thinking it wasn't a bad night out at all!
What does the glass blower dream of?
Perfection. Perfect blemish free glass. No bubbles, no cord, no infinitesimal specks of iron or ash. Just flawless diamond bright fire polished glass. But his demands don’t stop there. He also dreams of form. Wine glasses with long elegant stems. Wine glasses with short stems. Bowls, plates, vases, jugs. He imagines them in every variation of shape and volume, their proportions endlessly refined until they become the very essence of the idea of jug or plate or paperweight. He has spent days and weeks dreaming up these shapes. And still there is more, there is the relentless drive to hone the skills required to realise these dreams, to have hand and tool working with such synergy that it would be impossible to separate the one from the other. To have every moment spent on the bench working result in… perfection. It’s not too much to ask is it? Perfection of material, perfection of form and the ultimate goal, perfection of ability to shape the glass. To have them all come together and result in the work of a lifetime. A masterpiece he can unashamedly be proud of? He looks at what he has made. Squat. Ugly. Heavy. Full bubbles and scarred by an inadvertent deployment of his tools. It falls a long way short of his dreams. He sighs and goes back to work. There is such a long way to go.
Big Night Out
Twenty-two years ago I went out on a St. Patrick’s Day bender. There was Guinness by the bucket load (naturally). There was also a vast amount of Irish whisky. This sort of thing can lead to interesting situations. Inhibitions come down and you find yourself saying and doing things that might be considered wild, or at least wildly out of character. I ended up snogging a lass I’d fancied for years, I’d always been too scared to tell her how I felt. One wedding, two kids and three houses later, I'm thinking it wasn't a bad night out at all!
What does the glass blower dream of?
Perfection. Perfect blemish free glass. No bubbles, no cord, no infinitesimal specks of iron or ash. Just flawless diamond bright fire polished glass. But his demands don’t stop there. He also dreams of form. Wine glasses with long elegant stems. Wine glasses with short stems. Bowls, plates, vases, jugs. He imagines them in every variation of shape and volume, their proportions endlessly refined until they become the very essence of the idea of jug or plate or paperweight. He has spent days and weeks dreaming up these shapes. And still there is more, there is the relentless drive to hone the skills required to realise these dreams, to have hand and tool working with such synergy that it would be impossible to separate the one from the other. To have every moment spent on the bench working result in… perfection. It’s not too much to ask is it? Perfection of material, perfection of form and the ultimate goal, perfection of ability to shape the glass. To have them all come together and result in the work of a lifetime. A masterpiece he can unashamedly be proud of? He looks at what he has made. Squat. Ugly. Heavy. Full bubbles and scarred by an inadvertent deployment of his tools. It falls a long way short of his dreams. He sighs and goes back to work. There is such a long way to go.