Clare Gaylard Glass 

Temperatures were in the upper eighties well before noon today. So the class working with torches and a kiln fired-up in a non-air-conditioned room deserve an award for uncommon valour.

A solid days work, opening the kiln was a pleasure. It looks like a bigger yield still on the rod and planted in a pot!

Not a piece of technology Apple would aknowledge but beautiful to me. An Oxygen Concentrator that permits me to revert to a super-fine, intensely hot flame, a high level of control and larger work. Working with a Hothead torch has given me all the satisfaction of successfully training a rough dog. There's a real fondness and sense of acheivement but it has been WORK. I got the big torch on today for the first time in 18 months without and felt omnipotent. Momentarily.

The Book of Changes (I-Ching) provides my exhibition title and has many natural connections with the mood and character of my work at the moment. I was introduced to it twenty years ago when my father came across it via Jung and my own copy is falling apart at the seams. I'm in good company, today I found some more Confucius via Ezra Pound:

'As the sun makes it new. Day by day make it new, Yet again make it new.'

Well the colours are hot compared with the bleached tones of my organics. The glass shards have a lovely random quality and my children enjoy legitimately breaking glass. Although it requires some control to break it into useable fragments without grinding it to dust. I made cane on the right, which is mixed and pulled while red-hot. The unique colour twists give detail and depth to fine work.

My current studio view is mostly wall, some bamboo and a small patch of sky. Things get more interesting when monkeys arrive from the nearby nature reserve. They are incorrigable and aggressive thieves so there is always a flurry of shouting and and a domino effect of windows being slammed shut along the long line of houses.

A chunk of the press release!

...Clare?s art reflects the both the ethereal and celestial, also the artist?s abiding fascination with the natural world. Heaven Above Earth Below is the hexagram of the ?I Ching? that represents the creative above and receptive below. Clare?s work combines a passion for the physical act of creating with a love of storytelling. ?I have always thrived on working across different scale and media and enjoy the richness of expression and the dialogue between the flamework glass and paintings I create.?

At The Glass Studio on Emily Hill.

 I'm almost at the stage of pinning dates to my class schedule this June, I should have them in the next day or so.

I'll be doing an introductory class, an intermediate and an advanced class on rotation so it will be possible to mix

and match dates and days a bit. It will be possible to book torch time at The Glass Studio at Emily Hill after 

completing the introductory and intermediate classes. We are hoping to set in place a good basis for learning and

personal development! I've added a 'Classes' page to this site and will update information as soon as I have it.

The class sizes will be small, 3 persons max and a torch each so it should be a good way to learn. I'm looking

forward to it as I am going to be based there for much of June anyway!

I have been asked to be Artist in Residence for the month of June and will

end the month with an exhibition. The Glass Studio has a dedicated workshop 

for flamework / lampwork with single and dual fuel torches.

There are facilities in place/being developed by glass artist Tan Sock Fong 

for Stained Glass, Fusing, Mosaic and Lapidary, and a compact gallery space

- Converzee.

Emily Hill is a suprise, a creative co-operative based in lovely colonial grounds

and buildings on top of a breezy hill, ridiculously close to Orchard Rd. 

www.emilyhill.org parking, gardens and a great bar/cafe. All good reasons to

rise above the clamour and consumption of Orchard.....

We get to watch the carp.

More bleached beach colours from Aus feeding into my work.

Back from Australia and a week in the middle of a huge forest in a national park but near the coast. The best of both worlds. The colours, the silence and the scale are an inspiring and benevolent shock to the system after Singapore city life.

Japanese Tonbo Dama are complex, layered glass beads used

for kanzashi and kimono ornaments. Tonbo-dama is

commonly taken to mean dragonfly-ball or dragonfly-eye. Typical

examples are subtle, complex and many layered. The aesthetic is

very different to that of Western Glass and enchantingly singular.

There's an obsessional quality and passion for detail that I find

fascinating. I've read it from cover to cover already, now I just

have to get the children off to school in a most un-maternal rush

so I can get to my workbench.

All made on my Hothead torch. Yesterday. I am measuring my pleasure

against all the clouded, burnt glass and curtailed sessions I had while

in denial. The colours are much better than they look in this low-res photo

 I'm afraid I wasted rather a lot of time complaining and wishing for my dual

fuel torch when I could have been working..... its hard to unlearn,

back to that vastly under-rated torch.

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