Shifting States
Cast glass, digital fabrication, projected microscopy
Two-part cast-glass sculpture with projected microscopic marine photography
Each element approx. 21 × 7 × 6 cm
Overall dimensions variable
Shifting States began with a tiny marine fragment found while exploring a Scottish beach. Its surface carried an unfamiliar structure - a small calcium-carbonate tube made by a marine worm that made me want to look closer. A trace of history held within it - layers and surfaces carrying traces of growth, attachment and environment.
I scanned the fragment, scaled it up and digitally reworked before translating through layered wood, sand and molten glass projected light. The fragment moved through a series of material states, with each stage altering what could be seen and what remained.
Process
I laser scanned the original found fragment and worked into it by following, dividing and reconfiguring its geometry, revealing contours and layers that were difficult to read at its tiny original scale. The resulting structure was translated into layers of laser-cut wood, assembled by hand, pressed into sand and used to create moulds for molten glass.
Moving between biological structure, digital information, wood, sand and glass became part of the work itself, a sequence of translations
As the form moved through scanning, wood, sand and molten glass, each process added new traces of its own. I began to think about these accumulated layers as a kind of material or ecological memory - the original histories of growth and environment carried forward, altered and added to through making. Nothing is reproduced exactly; something is retained, something changes.
Shifting States, two-part cast-glass sculpture by Elaine Ford
Microscopy
later projected my microscopy images of marine life through the clear glass. The images temporarily transform the sculptures: colour collects inside them, catches on textures, passes through openings and spills into the surrounding space as light and shadow
Artist Note
There is something about being beside the sea, the rhythm, sound and movement of water that wakes me up and makes me feel alive.
I grew up in Thurso on Scotland's far north coast, and the sea has always felt elemental to me. A lot of my work begins in much the same way as this one did: noticing something I don't quite understand, becoming curious about it, and wanting to look closer.
