Alive, and well?

Collaboration with John Sharvin

Blown away series 3 episode 7

Photo Credit: Blown Away Series and Marble Media Official.

You know what the best thing about working with glass is? The community. In this challenge we had to work as a team to create a unique work of art based around two words that are synonymous. John Sharvin chose me to be a part of #teamjohn! We had the honor to have Robin and Julia Rogers, collaborative artists and key figures at the Chrysler Museum of Glass, as guest evaluators.

John Sharvin and I collaborated conceptually and technically and chose Alive and Well as our word choice… Of course we couldn’t leave it at that so we put a little bit of a dark and creepy twist on it by using the Czech fairy tale Little Otik as our inspiration. In the tale, a couple is unable to have a child, so the father - a woodsman - carves a small figure from a tree stump and gives it to his wife. She is so desperate to have a child that she immediately treats this tree stump as an actual baby… until it comes to life with an insatiable hunger - it even eats the cat! We made a little nod to this element with the cat rattle.

Honestly, this was one of the most the fun challenges because we got to work together rather than compete against each other… it felt much more like real life.