Campaspe Artists Studio Trail

I am a glass artist with trams for my galleries. I was brought up at my father’s knee, in turpentine and oil paint. I progressed through a variety of arts and crafts with a long stint in lapidary with Jasper (our local stone from Corop) and opal as my stones of choice. Junk art captured me and I ran the Corop Junk Art Exhibition.

My interest in rocks has been lifelong and I am particularly drawn to the deep reds of the local Jasper, a semi-precious form of quartz which is very hard and takes patience to cut and polish. My first stone is pictured. I then learned wire wrapping to wear and display my stones.

Since October 2023, I taught myself leadlight techniques as I wanted a huge leadlight picture on a recycled frame, depicting our local Brolgas over Lake Cooper, with the grape, canola wheat crops that were here when I was a child.

Once this huge piece was finished, I allowed myself to start fusing, and glass art has become my passion. I have a small Ward kiln and have been limited to 30 cm square pieces. But using cold fusion to adhere parts, I have fired larger windows for my repurposed W class tram. These were recently delivered from the Victorian Government’s redeployment of surplus rolling stock. I might live long enough to fill 40 windows per tram x 4 trams. I now have a top hat kiln large enough to fuse 2 tram windows at a time.

My work in the lapidary field equipped me with the tools and equipment used equally for cold working glass, so my range is quite wide from flat pictures to contoured pictures to slumped three dimensional vases, bowls and trinkets and Christmas decorations.