Ocean Dive - Cathryn Shilling
Ocean Dive - Cathryn Shilling
by Cathryn Shilling£3,500.00
Ocean Dive
This complex piece is made from hundreds of very fine stands of glass and dichroic and is a new departure from my Diorama series.
Traditional dioramas sought to imitate nature and thereby instil the viewer with a reverence to its beauty and grandeur by offering a glimpse into the vastness and spectacular nature of the world. They were also used to illustrate an environment before changes were made to it due to the impact of human involvement. Oceans cover about seventy percent of the Earth’s surface and are integral to life and influence both global climate and weather patterns. There is evidence since 1900 of a continuous rise in temperature due to human activity that is affecting the marine ecosystem.
This piece is intended to suggest the sensation of diving below the surface of a deep ocean.
Cathryn is best known for her trademark glass cloth pieces which utilise Venetian glass cane techniques. The individual canes are made by drawing molten glass into fine threads of no more than one or two millimetres in diameter. Cathryn then uses a painstaking process to bring these filaments together, strand upon strand, before fusing them in the kiln until they resemble sheets of woven fabric.
The sheets of glass textile are then re-fired and shaped in the kiln through moulding, bending and draping. The result are breathtaking three-dimensional artworks ranging from free-standing sculptures to opulent bowls edged with gold or coated with a fine layer of metal. The vibrant surfaces of these pieces move and shimmer, exploiting texture, light, reflection and colour in surprising ways which evoke a sense of movement within the object.
