Tell us about your practice and how you came to making?

I come from a craft-based background, so making has always felt like a natural language to me. Both of my parents worked in ceramics, and growing up in that environment meant I was constantly surrounded by material, process, and the rhythms of a life built around making. When I was 12, we moved from the US to the UK to an English country pottery.

I found glass in my early twenties, initially working in a factory in Bath, UK, and later through a BFA and MFA at the Royal Danish Academy, where I began developing a personal material language to match my hand skills. What drew me to glass was its fluidity and immediacy. Since then, my practice has evolved into an ongoing exploration of glass as a material with its own distinct voice something I work in collaboration with, rather than impose upon. My focus has been on developing a language that highlights the inherent qualities of glass while also pushing it into new territory as a contemporary, expressive medium.

Do you have a ritual when it comes to making/designing work?

The entire process feels ritualistic to me. Making these works especially the more complex ones requires a group of highly skilled assistants moving together with precision and shared intention. Every action matters, and once we begin, there is no pause. The process unfolds in real time, and you’re fully committed from start to finish.

That intensity creates a kind of meditative state. You become completely present, attuned not only to the material but also to the people around you. It becomes about responding in the moment reading the material, understanding its behavior, and knowing when to guide it and when to let it lead. There’s a quiet, collective rhythm that develops, which feels both disciplined and intuitive.

Glass is a very niche part of the craft and art world, when did you first step into a glass studio, and what drew you to glass as a medium?

My first real encounter with glass came through working in a factory in Bath. I started right at the bottom washing, packing, and shipping glass. It wasn’t an art context initially, but it exposed me to the hand skills and discipline that would later support the work I wanted to make. 

What drew me in was the sense of movement and transformation. A gesture made in seconds can define the final object forever. That combination of urgency, risk, and permanence felt unlike anything I had experienced before.

You've spent twenty years pushing the boundary of what glass can do, demonstrating truly unique manipulations of this medium. Was that a conscious ambition from the start, or did the material itself lead you somewhere you didn't expect?

It wasn’t something I set out to do from the beginning. It’s more that the material kept opening doors. The deeper I went into working with glass, the more I realized how much potential there was to develop an expression in glass far beyond traditional expectations. Questioning what glass can look like, how it can behave, and where it sits between art, design, and craft. Much of that has come from listening to the material and following where it leads, rather than trying to impose a fixed outcome. In that sense, the direction of the work has been shaped as much by discovery as by intention.

Since your work is so temporal and unpredictable, what type of influences do you bring into the studio when you come to make a piece?

There’s always a mix of influences such as nature, the body, architecture, but I try not to translate those references too directly. They tend to sit more in the background, informing the work subtly rather than dictating it.

What’s more important is entering the studio with a sense of openness and responsiveness. Because the material is so dynamic, the process itself becomes the primary influence. It’s a dialogue between intention and reaction, where prior ideas meet what’s actually happening in the moment.

In your Fluid Topographies and Abstract Form Studies series, how did the conceptual framework and the physical process develop — did one lead the other, or were they always in conversation?

They developed in parallel. There’s always some level of planning, sketches, technical

considerations, a general direction but the process itself plays an equally important role in shaping the outcome.

In the Fluid Topographies series especially, I began allowing myself more freedom within the moment, letting the process help define the final form. Surface, structure, and the interaction with light all evolved through an ongoing conversation with the material. Rather than one leading the other, concept and process were constantly informing and reshaping each other.

The way you finish your glass is very unique, almost uncanny to exist in the three dimensional space. The iridescence and texture of each piece feels like an object rendered on a screen. How does your work inform this type of finish work and vice versa?

The finish is inseparable from the form. The mirrored interior and sand-carved exterior are not simply aesthetic decisions they fundamentally alter how the object interacts with light and space.

I’m interested in disrupting expectations of glass as a purely transparent material. By blocking full transparency and instead reflecting and diffusing light, the work takes on a kind of internal luminosity. It becomes less about seeing through the object and more about experiencing how light is held, redirected, and contained within it.

You frame your practice around what the handmade object might become — tied to transformation, sustainability, experimentation. What do you think glass, specifically, offers to that future that other materials don’t?

Glass has a unique ability to capture time and transformation. A fleeting moment in the making process can become something that lasts for centuries. That relationship between immediacy and permanence feels especially relevant now, as we reconsider how and why we make objects.

Working with glass encourages a flexible mindset, less about dominating a material and more about collaborating with it. I think that approach has broader relevance, particularly when thinking about the future of materiality and making in a digital age. It suggests a more responsive, respectful way of engaging with materials and processes.

What’s next for you?

I’m interested in translating the visual and conceptual language I have developed over the years into other materials, such as marble or bronze. There’s something compelling about trying to capture the fluidity of glass within something much more static and resistant.

At the same time, I want to continue pushing scale and complexity within glass itself. Each step forward tends to open up new questions, so it feels less like arriving at a fixed point and more like continuing to evolve alongside the material.