MSWPS Featured Artist - Tessa Wallis

The featured artist section of the website regularly highlights a Full Member Artist. The artist will have won an award at the latest Changing Perspectives exhibition or the MSWPS Award, chosen by the artist’s peer members.

Currently featured is Tessa Wallis’s Silica Seaweed. Tessa was the winner of the MSWPS Members Award at the 2023 Annual Exhibition.

Artist’s Statement:

The glass in Silica Seaweed is close to its origins in both name and materials; sea and sand.

I am challenged and fascinated by the prospect of converting a flat piece of glass into a form with movement. The play of light through transparent glass is increased using a sculptural approach which highlights the unique qualities of glass.

As seaweed is almost transparent and moves freely with the currents and tides, I chose to emulate it in this artwork which uses contemporary warm and cold glass techniques. Complex cutting was involved and transparent colour and textural glass droplets were added in separate kiln firings. The final slumping process was carefully controlled using unconventional moulds, each made to support the glass as it melted.

Warm glass art is gaining popularity and being used in exciting new ways.  Silica Seaweed is an example of the enormous potential for contemporary glass art sculpture.

Silica Seaweed, Glass 300 x 600 x 300mm