I have always been fascinated with glass, when I was a little girl I wanted to be a gemologist.

There is something special about the way it sparkles, captures light and reflects. It is hard and strong and at the same time very fragile and sharp.

Originally from New Zealand, I studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Whanganui. I intended to be a painter, but my studies had a very different path for me and I found I was quite good at sculpture and ceramics. I was taught glass blowing and kiln-formed glass and casting by some of the leaders in the American Glass movement. I found I could achieve sculpturally in glass everything I wanted to do in ceramics and more. Whanganui was the only glass school in New Zealand and I knew I was onto something special.

My thesis paper was about a Mexican iconic painter named Frida Kahlo and her relationship between art and illness. In Mexican culture and tradition a Retablo or Milagro would be created as an offering to the gods depicting the event, death, illness, tragedy or anguish.

I use glass as a way to depict and expel grief, pain, emotion, anxiety and conflict in my personal life. It has the ability to convey positive and negative spaces, it is a vessel and a skin as such. It translates the world that I live in, when words cant communicate this. 

Glass sculpture is a vessel between my world and yours. 

                                           -Joanna Robertson

Possible Worlds