ITALIAN SOFT GLASS

Italian Soft Glass is a material that features throughout a lot of our work. Brett is the glass worker in Outgoing. She was introduced to the medium while attending the Bead Project Residency at Urban Glass in Brooklyn in 2023. This generous and intensive residency at Urban Glass gave Brett the integral guidance and freedom to really immerse herself in the possibilities of glass as a medium. Everyday she brought new glass pieces back to our studio, each one more fantastical than the last. Brett took to the techniques immediately, pushing the limits of her abilities and the glass further and further everyday. It was a joy to witness and the introduction of a new material brought with it, a mountain of inspiration and new possibilities. Her detailed accounts of the many attributes and ways of manipulating the material, the different colors, opacities and characteristics were spellbinding. Not to mention the unbelievable things she was making with it, our studio now populated with this new civilization of glass beads, tiny sculptures and rigorous test pieces.

Our conversations, while admiring all of this new work, studying her sketchbook opened up a whole new world for Brett and Outgoing. The possibilities for glass feel endless. It has lead so many new ideas. We inspected how it reacted to different light sources, what are the sculptural possibilities for it, how might it hold structure, how it felt in conjunction with other materials like cork, aluminium, wax thread, what happened when you placed it on an overhead projector?

In 2024 Brett was an International Glass Bead Artist recipient at the 2024 British Glass Biennial representing USA. Exhibiting three works at the International Glass festival in Stourbridge the celebrated historical home of glass in England.