Clare Gaylard Glass 

The Suffolk Open Studios season starts with an exhibition at Blackthorpe Barn from 26th May to 4th June 2012. The exhibition contains the work of over Suffolk artists working in a wide variety of media. For more information please go to www.suffolkopenstudios.co.uk

I am artist #67 and following the exhibition my home studio will be open to the public for two weekends in July: 16th/17th & 23rd/24th if you are in the area please drop by for a look around and the chance to see me at the torch.

The stallholder let us have an extra one free due to the time and concentration our eight year old put into choosing her miniature; 'Already a woman' he commented approvingly. My triumph was leaving a fleamarket having only spent 2 euros on my own purchase, the long deco Cartier panthere.

We took the kids to Mont St Michel in France for their first time and they were suitably blown away, insisting we come back again at night and high tide. As kids we used to approach it by walking across the bay, enchanted by the fact that the tide came in 'Faster than a man on a galloping horse' and intrigued to see if our parents had the tide times right. Reaching the dark, caverous cathedral at the top and looking out at the endless sea around gives you a glorious concentration of man-made and natural elements.

We were lucky to get some bright, sharp and sunny days in France (Brittany) this Easter. We stayed in Dinard and had masses of coast and cold, clear spring colours everywhere. We took mostly photographs and left mostly footprints but there is a bag of irresistable shells and crab armoury waiting in the garden that needs to be examined once the sea smells have weathered away some more.

Some of my glass eggs, macaroons from Laduree in favour of a real egg (the packaging is worth keeping) and ceramic flowers on a cross from a graveyard in Dol de Bretagne.

Its a mighty blog leap from December to the week before Easter, life got in the way, I'll choose to think of it as moving gently from Winter to Spring and its fine to be back in my studio with windows open. Over Christmas we caught the 'Treasures of Heaven' exhibition which was a splendid, surreal collection of reliquaries and artefacts, general favourites were the ornate hand and foot reliquaries. I loved the stunning miniature shrines and the clever nod to the continued urge to develop shrines and relics for the cult heroes and tragic figures of recent times.

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The Suffolk Open Studios Winter Exhibition opens Friday 2nd December. I will be exhibiting and selling glass. I have been dipping into a rich colour pallette as all the countryside slowly turns monochrome around me.

There is always more than one answer to what inspires a piece of art, but this one is easy. Niki de Saint Phalle is a favourite artist of mine and my exuberant bathing beauties are a tribute to her 'Nanas' She made some of her muses large enough to walk around inside and I enjoyed miniaturising mine to the size of a glass bead. If you want some carnival for the eyes check out her work http://www.nikidesaintphalle.com/

It doesn't come much simpler or more satisfying than a marble, I never mastered the game but I spent a fair bit of pocket money collecting them and marvelling over them. My brothers knew the names, the games and the street value of each item but I ended up with the longer term relationship. These are called 'Regatta'.

This long run of unseasonably good weather has brought everything out at once. This is our first summer of seeing the things we planted come through. In Asia the plantlife was robust and flaunting, so this subtle, delicate abundance is a continuing pleasure. 

The Showcase at Blackthorpe Barn, Bury St Edmunds opens tonight. When I saw that it was a medieval barn I imagined a rough exterior and a gallery interior, actually the interior is pretty medieval too so it is a big difference from my last few exhibitions in purpose made galleries.

We were in France over Easter and I enjoyed all the washed out pastel shades, gilding, patisseries and of course the Easter Eggs. I'm fascinated by the obsessive miniaturism of Faberge eggs so I have been making some of my own, but I haven't managed to dig out my gold leaf yet, see above..

'On the floating, shapeless oceans, I did all my best to smile, til your singing eyes and fingers, drew me loving into your eyes. And you sang, "Sail to me, sail to me, let me enfold you.' Here I am, here I am, waiting to hold you.' This Mortal Coil

My camera is playing me up but I think you can see the siren on the left is starting to lash her tail. Calypso is in the middle bound by her own desire.

I am finally ventillated and Gas Safe, this is my workbench before it has had the chance to get properly lived in. I have been working with a hothead torch and welders bottles of gas until now. These bottles start to frost up after an hour of torching, the noise is intense and the flame is cold, dirty and bushy. The bottles run out after about four hours, it is a pretty joyless process! As of last Thursday I have a graceful, intense, silent flame to work with and that is a beautiful thing.

In France we visit Maison Laduree, pre-revolutionary inventors of the double macaroon and purveyors of cakes to the 'Marie Antoinette' movie by Sophia Coppola, Norte Dame, Abbaye de Fountrevaud (run by nuns, burial place of Eleanor of Aquitane), Chateau Usse, the inspiration for Perrault's 'Sleeping Beauty' and Rouen where we find the cathederal replete with obscure female saints holding the objects of their martyrdom and a lyrical bit of side street graffit that all leans strongly towards 'Death and the Maiden'. The sun shone constantly, the food was magnificent there was plenty to celebrate.

In June 2011 I'll be taking part in Suffolk Open Studios, a collaberative organisation run by artists. My studio (and those of many other Suffolk based artists) will be open each weekend in June so its a relaxed chance to engage with artists in their creative environment.

You can find my artist page, dates and directions at www.suffolkopenstudios.co.uk no new work there, it will be in my studio this June.

http://aiweiwei.tate.org.uk/content/717786429001

Well the link above is not a great video for the content but for a parent it has amusement value. The children DID love the exhibition and did want to make a video, then bailed when we pressed play, and then tried to press the button to cut me off mid-flow.. So off camera I am seizing then holding a small hand away from the off switch while I try to keep my flow.

I took the children up as high as the weather would permit in St Paul's Cathedral, past the glorious monuments and mosaics and into the Whispering Gallery but the guard kept SHOUTING at people which defeated the purpose so we went higher for some silence to the Stone Gallery which gave us these long views over an iced London. The windows at Fortnum and Mason gave us some amazing Trompe L'oeil examples of Old Masters and clever, subversive (well to the eye) paintings that had been made in relief to trick the eye. The camera did not comply.

I have always liked De La Tour babies, all the more since having my own. Brave and kind of him of him to leave aside the halos and garlands in favour of a tight, white parcel with a squashed red face.

Well not yet, but the 'Coldest British Winter Ever' has just started again. My second season of snow in well over a decade of African and Asian winters, so the fear of navigating it still weighs less in the balance than the amazement of it.