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Making a career as an artist is a difficult path in life. How to balance the often conflicting demands of surviving financially and staying true to your artistic integrity and vision is challenging. What Loretta and Mr Chang have built with Liuli Glass is an extraordinary achievement in addressing those issues. The model of building a network of galleries in Asia and the USA, together with studios and museums in Taipei and Shanghai, allows Loretta to pursue her own creative work and provides a platform for international exhibitions such as this one. It's not a model I have seen anywhere else in the world. I am deeply impressed.
The concept of this exhibition, 'A Thread of Light; British Glass Artists Across Three Generations ' evolved gradually through a dialogue with Andrew Brewerton, Mr Chang and Loretta. It's a great theme for an exhibition. Keith Cummings was my tutor at college and the other artists all trained in my studio after graduating. It shows the continuity and development of the genre over three generations during the last 40 years since I started studying with Keith, during a period which has been one of the most significant in the development of glass as a creative medium in its long history of over 4000 years.
Keith Cummings is regarded as the Father of British Kiln-formed Glass, but he is a very significant figure on the world stage. Students under his supervision in the 1970's and 1980's developed many of the techniques that have since become mainstream. He also did groundbreaking research into ancient glassmaking techniques to investigate how the Egyptians and Romans made their exquisite glass. I was privileged to assist him in some of this. I was already a trained flameworker when I studied with him and was able to put into practice his theory of how ancient core formed vessels were made. Keith is a modest man and I think his significance in the development of studio glass is insufficiently acknowledged. He now only makes a very small number of pieces and we are really fortunate that he could participate in the exhibition.
It is thanks to Keith that I chose to work with kiln-cast glass. The kilnwork studio at Stourbridge College was like a crazy kitchen with glass being melted, fused, slumped, coldworked. It was a riot of colour and experimentation. The moulds were primitive and often broke in the firing. We didn't have computer controllers for the kilns so we sometimes sat all night adjusting the temperature. I quickly got hooked and realised the potential of what he was doing. I had intended to do hot glass but I changed to work with kiln-casting.
Kiln-casting is a slow, labour intensive way of making objects in glass. During my career I have been incredibly fortunate in having a succession of excellent, talented studio assistants. It has been such an important support in enabling me to make my work.
I am very proud of their success as artists. Mostly they came to me for a couple of years after graduation to train in a professional studio. They went on to establish their own practices and studios, in many cases also doing a Masters Degree at the Royal College of Art in London. I have been fascinated to see how they have built on their experience in my studio to develop their own language and style and to develop their own techniques. As a group my former assistants are the leading and most established artists in kiln-cast glass in the UK. I am proud of them all and it's really special that we are all showing here together with Keith as well.