AOTM April 2010 - Emma Mackintosh

Started by sparrow, March 30, 2010, 08:24:40 PM

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Emma Mackintosh

When my kids were younger and more tolerant, I painted fabric to make their clothes – as they grew up, I studied textile design part time for 2 years, moving on to devore velvet, as well as making and selling textile jewellery. I started incorporating beads into the jewellery and somewhere along the line realised that selling the beads themselves was more fun (and more successful!).

One frozen December we visited a bead factory in the North of the Czech Republic. I was fascinated by the process, and by the stacks of rods waiting to be used. At about the same time I saw some of Di East's beads in a magazine and was bowled over by their originality and colour. I decided to learn more about this beadmaking thing, got a Fireworks kit from the US as a Christmas present, read and watched everything I could find on the internet, and set off.

  

It was a fairly bumpy start! I realised almost immediately that the Fireworks torch was really only good for caramel custard and that the kit, among its many other shortcomings, had no eye protection. It took 2 weeks of hard searching and several baffled Cumbrian building supplies merchants to track down a source of Mapp gas, but I was hooked and well on the way down the slippery slope that is a glass obsession.

My glass work changed completely in December 2008. I studied metallurgy at college many years ago, and as soon as I started using glass, the materials science student in me wanted to experiment. I'd always been fascinated by boro but was scared off by all the talk of flame chemistry, colour combinations and needing recipes. It all felt quite daunting – unnecessarily daunting, I now feel.

  

Eventually the pull became too strong and I bought my bobcat, which can just about do boro on one oxycon. It clicked almost immediately! Boro just makes sense to me. Call it a weird metallurgical geek thing or just weird, but I love the way this glass works - the colours and its capabilities fascinate me. It has also made me want to explore the potential of glass as a medium beyond beads made on-mandrel.

I stood and watched Ian Pearson for hours at the Flame Off last year, working his magic with clear glass. Watching someone create ideas out of nowhere was inspiring and made me want to learn more about the techniques involved. I went on a course with Julie Anne Denton last October that taught a lot of sculptural skills, and have been trying to incorporate some of them into pendants ever since. I still have a long way to go, but am enjoying learning.



I like my work to be practical or useful in some way. I'd love to learn to blow glass and to work out how to incorporate smaller elements into larger pieces. I have a strange desire to put lizards on coffee pots and mice in teacups!

What I do is still evolving (my family tell me I never sit still). I will always love nature, but pure nature isn't what I'm good at – pretty flowers just don't work when I make them. I prefer to twist and interpret nature in unexpected ways! At the moment I have a real 'thing' for eyes. Eye cane is fabulous fun to make and eyes are so expressive.

  

I look at other people's work both here on the Show and Tell and elsewhere, and am amazed by so much of it. While I never feel as good as anyone else, I have come to realise that I work best when I'm not trying to match up to other people. When I relax and follow my own instincts and inspirations, I have more fun – and I hope this shows in what I produce.

My work can be seen on my website, http://www.theflyingbead.co.uk  and my Etsy shop, http://www.flyingbead.etsy.com
Sabine x

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