Brittle Beauty
Glass Casting & Blowing. Sculpture. Light Projection.
Brittle Beauty reimagines sea urchins, coral, and starfish as fragile glass forms. Where science preserves specimens to study, here glass captures their structure through light, fragility, resilience, showcasing these hidden wonders. The work sits between laboratory and studio, holding marine life at once as data, memory, and transformation
Brittle Beauty grew from a fascination with how science and art treat the idea of the “specimen.” In museums, shells and coral are kept behind glass for study, frozen in time. In the studio, glass itself becomes the medium of preservation - liquid fire transformed into brittle forms that echo marine skeletons. Some works are cast with precision, others fracture and explode, revealing the indomitable forces of the glass casting and glass blowing.
Their fragility mirrors the real vulnerability of marine ecosystems under climate stress. Their fragility mirrors the vulnerability of marine ecosystems under climate stress, inviting an embodied, sensory encounter beyond simple classification. In this way, the work asks how we hold the natural world: as specimen, as memory, or as something alive and shifting, always beyond our control.
With thanks to the Natural History Museum, University of Edinburgh School of Zoology and Edinburgh College of Art