Guardians

We began making the Guardians in direct response to an invitation to participate in the first 'Aperto Vetro' in Venice in 1996. We conceived of them as powerful courtesans and courtiers of the era of the Doge, prior to the arrival of Napoleon and the fall of Venice as an independent state.

They so pleased and inspired us that we have been making them in evolved shapes ever since. Extravagant, decadent, elegant, beautiful, exaggerated, refined, frail, or fat: they expand our previous strict notions of form.

In essence, they are vessel forms, stretched, pulled and elongated to their natural limit. They celebrate the fabulous elasticity of glass and morph from applied art to abstraction while traversing a single articulated line. They are people, flora and fauna, long-necked and extravagant birds; whimsical, amusing, fleeting and delicate. They are companions, fellow travellers with a different perspective.

View an installation of Guardians at the Kunsthalle, Bern here.