The subtle and fluid imagery in Ruth's work is largely drawn from nature and worked by hand as she sandblasts fine layers of glass to create effects of colour and texture that suggest worlds within worlds. The pieces have all been blown to her design under her direction by Sonja Klingler in West Woodlands.
'Glass requires a very decisive approach' she says 'So decisions on the precise combinations of colours are made long before any breath enters the glass"
Having drawn the design onto the cooled glass and protected it with a durable film, Ruth cuts lines to make a single use stencil before carefully blasting away layers to create the intended intensity of colour and pattern.
She explains 'Using hand cut stencils dictates the clean lines that you see in the glass. The imagery describes the space, the flicker of a bird in a hedgerow or a fish in a pool are fleeting things that make you look twice. Birds, fishes and trees live in a three dimensional world and I think they migrate happily into glass
unlike material of a rigid molecular structure, glass can be worked both as liquid and as a solid, with a different set of techniques for each.'
Based in her workshop in West Knoyle, Ruth studied a 3 dimensional design BA Hons at what is now the Surrey Institute. After this she worked for two years at The Glasshouse in London. After travelling widely she settled in Wiltshire establishing her practise in 1986.
She has exhibited extensively both in the UK and Internationally, she has also worked with Buckingham palace to make gifts for the Queen to present. As well as the objects that are exhibited here
Ruth works with flat glass on an architectural and domestic scale.
