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In my last post about Sue Treanor, I mentioned Elizabeth McClure as Lecturer in Glass at Carrington Polytechnic, UNITEC in the 1990s. Elizabeth is someone whose role in New Zealand glass is perhaps less well known. To my shame I recall giving a talk about glass in the 1980s in New Zealand without mentioning her, when she was in the audience! She was very gracious about it, and we subsequently had a good interview, in the course of which I learned a lot. I first saw Elizabeth's work in March 1994, at an exhibition Little Jewels organised in the James Cook Hotel in Wellington by the regrettably short-lived Arts Marketing Board of Aotearoa (AMBA). I purchased this exquisite scent bottle there. It's small and delicate, only 5.2 cm in diameter, and decorated in enamels.  It was made in September 1993 - Elizabeth is meticulous in marking her work detail. The bottle had originally been shown in Making Marks the first solo exhibition of her work after her return to New Zealand, held at...

  I was really lucky to be in Auckland this week so I could see Ann Robinson's amazing exhibition BRIM at FHE Galleries. Ann is renowned for her exploration of the bowl form and yet here she takes it in a completely new direction. These are distinctly and recognisably Ann Robinson bowls and yet they represent a totally new body of work. She describes in the poem that accompanies the exhibition the process, intellectual, technical and physical that led to these works.  I won't try to explain that here, that is for Ann to do, which she does most eloquently of course through the bowls themselves. This is an exhibition that you really must try to get to see for yourself. The photographs by Kieran Scott reproduced here from the FHE exhibition brochure are great, but you need to see the bowls themselves. The exhibition is on at FHE Galleries in Kitchener Street, Auckland until 29 June 2013.

I blogged a few days ago about a piece in my collection by Kharen Hope, and outlined the information I had been able to gather on this artist, previously unknown to me.  Several people I met in Whanganui recently during the Festival of Glass recalled Kharen when she was a student and a staffer in the Glass department at UCOL, and suggested she now lives in Wellington. However, new information has come to light from an unexpected source.  A reader of my blog offered me a piece by Mel Simpson, which will feature in a forthcoming entry.  With the piece he gave me a copy of the catalogue for the 1984 Philips Studio Glass Award.  This is great, since while I had 1985 and 1986, I lacked this first exhibition catalogue. Browsing through, I was surprised and delighted to see number 12, a piece entitled 'Aging', entered by Kharen Hope of Matapouri. The catalogue images are not brilliant, and are all monochrome.  It's not easy to see the detail of the lettering around the...