Clare Gaylard Glass 

This May, a rhaphsody in green. the long, late spring continuing so we have multiple stages of leaf, blossom and bloom and sudden abundance everywhere. Setting my studio to rights (Suffolk Open Studios this month and I'm open 17th & 18th June 11am-4pm) after a very happy and busy stint solo at The Quay. Having scrambled to fill the gallery at under a week's notice, then stewarded for seven days and completed commissions, I sat down at the torch to hours of combining colours and twisting glass cane by way of a rest for my brain. It was also a way of reflecting back this sudden rush of verdant colour. 18th century embroidery and style at Christchurch Mansion. Eldest (briefly home) discovered a deceased corvid in the fields behind my studio - tranquil and graceful in repose - and worked it into a birthday card of glory. I've said I will have homemade birthday cards in lieu of anything else as long as they have time to make them. This level of creative detail perfoming a similar function to my cane-making.

Wednesday is my final day at this lovely gallery, what began as a mad scramble and some mild panic about filling the gallery effectively and coherently (due to my co-exhibitor having to drop out a few days before the exhibition) shifted into an incredibly happy and positive time. I've been working on drypoint etchings since last year so the walls were catered for and of course the images spoke of the themes and collections I have been working on. I've met many new folk, caught up with friends and have the prospect of enjoyable studio visits (Suffolk Open Studios 17th & 18th June) and classes. Which I will work out in due course - I'm sorry if you are waiting. I've stewarded for seven days after intense preparations and have had tunnel vision. THANK YOU for coming by.

Changes! Annette has dropped out of our annual joint show due to unforeseen circumstances. So it’s all me at The Quay - with my beautiful #glass and a wider collection of the sketching, painting and etching I create to explore and illuminate my work. I will be aiming to open at 1pm on Thursday

as there is consequently much more to do (I only get the keys at 9am) BUT if you have planned to come then (and can’t at another time) bang on the door and be prepared to step through work in progress! In the gallery for a week and opening other days 10am - 4.30pm. You will find @rolstonannette and her wonderful work as usual at @designermakers21 and @octagoncrafts in Diss.

March and a friend who tried and failed to catch the Northern lights over East Anglia asked if an Aurora Borealis ring might be possible. My scrambles along muddy hedgerows started to yield blossoms as well as skeletal remains. A visit to the RA to see 'Spain and the Hispanic World' was followed by a second brief visit to Barcelona to stay with youngsters pursing Catalan and Spanish classes in their spare time. THIS time taking in the magnificent Gaudi Park & the tranquil Joan Miró Foundation for the first time. Plus of course, returning to the Sagrada Familia and the Museu Nacional for the modern wing. The clocks are forward and spring is at last in motion.

First time back in Kings College Chapel in thirty years and finding they now charge £15 a person. Fortunately some of those decades were spent developing a free pass... There is now a rather lovely stained glass museum running along the anterooms on the left side. Maps of Miracles and pilgrim badges. Mixed weather and a late autumn pigeon nest (one of two abandoned in the garden) with eggs that can't have been viable. I've been making little birdskull icons, one here with a necklace of raindrops and another with a nest crown. Some fine spring days with deep blues and greens reappearing in the landscape along with the first snowdrops.

It's been an unusually wet November in Suffolk, we are all hoping for some cold, crisp days in December. Mud is over-rated. Back from Suffolk Craft Society at The Guildhall and layering teaching classes and return workshops along with work on commissions. Putting down the glass and tools for these distractions (however welcome) feels like breaking off a conversation halfway through. My mind is full of the work I was engaged with and at the same time under seige from new ideas. 

Every home should have one. While I was growing up, my family rarely missed a visit to a cathederal in any new city or country, the more medieval the better. This project danced in my head for a few busy days away from my workbench, I managed to steal a rationed hour or so at the workbench and it coalesced. I give you my portable icon that transitions seamlessly from All Hallows Eve (wearing one or two elaborate ruffs) to All Saints Day (Halo) to All Souls Day (bereft of both, to ashes you will return) second photo for scale. A video of the process on my Instagram page - with carefully chosen accompanying music of beauty. Icon has moved on.

Lots of commissions and classes that had been waiting on the end of summer, a dry and parched autumn but astonishing berries and fruits on all the hedgerows. Creating a body of work for Walsingham Gallery and Octagon Crafts in near and far Norfolk and preparing for Suffolk Craft Society at The Guildhall, Bury St Edmunds.

September was a month of glorius weather and the domestic chaos of co-ordinating three young adults and their worldly goods to return to second year of university, return to a final year of university after an internship, and a first job (after a post-graduate year and the immense spanner in the works that was COVID). I was back to the torch with my moths but then a clever friend brought a handful of natural treasures to my studio that included guinea-fowl feathers. A prompt to explore the delights of monochrome, minimalism and simple pattern. Plus an experienced nurse plucked my rejected memento-mori ring with an anatomical heart from obscurity (drawers of glass experiments and orphans) and was determined to have it.

First time at Folk East and LOTS of risk assessment - due anyway but heightened by the intense heat and dry grounds of this summer. I didn't know until the day of set-up if I would be able to demonstrate and I think for an event like this it's key to making sense of my work. So I was ready to stand down but was pleased to be able to go ahead. What a lovely event and mood, I look forward to the further meeting ups and workshops that have/will come out of it and will be in touch with folk as soon as I've sorted myself out back in the studio. I've some chores to catch up on and some commissions to complete first!

July looks a little chaotic - it was, or maybe it's me? I had a wonderful time solo at The Crafthouse in Woodbridge and want to thank everyone who came by, what a lovely place to inhabit. I gave myself a project to complete in time for the show, a chess set. Since Wearable Art is my realm it is a complete set of 32 hairsticks with ornate finials. Based around the crown and accoutrements of Mary in the Van Eyck, Ghent altarpiece. Drypoint etching above also a tribute. July saw the realising of a happy collaberation with local silversmith Andrea Wright. I had to create more work for, then hang the Suffolk Craft society Summer Exhibition for the second year - works unseen by sixty Makers in three days. Then fulfilling commissions and torching through the heat of Midsummer -  very like being back in Asia. Hoping anyone here is moving more gracefully through the heatwaves!

More Moth Wing goodness for commissions and a single,busy Suffolk Open Studio weekend.  Thanks to everyone who came by. Picking peonies and roses after 9pm in the dusk as the evenings were so long. Trailing Moth Wing Earrings for those Midsummer nights. A profile in the clouds and preparation for a solo show at The Craft House in Woodbridge at the end of the month. A joint project with local silversmith Andrea Wright.

Thanks to everyone who came by for Open Studios, if you missed it then next up for me is a solo show at The Craft House in Woodbridge from 29th June - 5th July, more information to follow.

Well this was the month that I lost my five year old Instagram account to hackers. They moved in fast, closed me out completely, and no protocols and appeals worked for me to get it reinstated or deleted. I thought the despair of the Burgher of Calais by Rodin (in miniature form at The Red House in Aldeburgh) was expressive of my emotions at the time. Onward and Upwards, I have two legit accounts (current and archive) both followed by the Suffolk Craft Society. Exhibiting in the Arts Centre in Wymondham provided a private view of the Abbey, for the most part closed. I was peering in through a locked door and was suddenly invited inside. A divine theme including this experience emerged on my birthday in terms of gifts. A Crown ring for the Jubilee amd  Happy and Glorious person, roses and peonies from the garden, glass moth wings and some vast Suffolk skies. 

My Instagram account for the past five years has been hacked - profile image of me at the torch.

 DO NOT ENGAGE WITH IT OR ANY MESSAGES THEY ARE NOT FROM ME. PLEASE jUST REPORT AND BLOCK.

 My new account and archive account are followed by the Suffolk Craft Society