Spending time outdoors and in gardens this Summer, is one of the ways that we are making our way through these challenging times.

We were looking forward to taking part in some outdoor exhibitions this year, some of which have been cancelled, however four of Colin’s garden pieces are available from AA Fine Art in their Garden Sculpture exhibition.

The exhibition features the work of ten artists working in various materials including stone, bronze and clay.

Click on link to visit the exhibition  Amanda Aldous Fine Art

It was during lockdown and with great uncertainty that we began to plan and blow our pieces for the Jewel Garden exhibition.

During that time, back in March and April we, like many others, became more grateful than ever for our outside space, spending time close to home on our allotment, sowing seeds and raising plants.

As Spring turned to Summer the flowers came out and became the source of inspiration for Louise to create the drawings for the sand carved surfaces of our three finished pieces,  Cornflower, Cosmo and Summer bouquet.

It is a joy for us now to see our work on display in the exhibition, alongside the work of our fellow guild members, in a bricks and mortar gallery that is able to safely open to the public.

These pieces, that began as seeds of hope to us, now represent and celebrate the welcome coming of Summer after an extraordinarily challenging Spring.

Jewel Garden Exhibition

A mixed discipline exhibition of work inspired by the forms and colours of plants anf flowers.

The Guild@51

30th June - 9th August

Tues-Sat 10-2

Instagram Locostudioglass

Cornflowers..We sowed the seeds of these intensely blue flowers back in March and now they are blooming as lockdown is easing a little, bringing joy to us and doing their thing for the pollinators.

We have had our allotment for 18 years and it has always been such a wonderul source of joy and inspiration and this year we we have been especially grateful for it.

Through a process of experimentation in our glass blowing studio we discovered just the right combination of two colours. We used this unique blend to achieve an intense and deep blue with variation of sapphire shades and hints of violet, closely representing the colours found within the Cornflower itself.  Each of the bowls made is blown by hand and has their own drawing of a flowing tangle of stem and bloom that is sandcarved by hand into the surface. Each of these elements drawn from observing the Cornflower plants combine to capture their essence

We have made a small group of six of these bowls and are offering them as part of the wonderful @artistsupportpledge

https://www.locoglass.co.uk/products/204-cornflower-bowl

Cornflower bowl

Hand blown, sand carved glass.

13cm x 8cm

We are always inspired by nature, most recently our focus has been to create work that reflects the diverse, and in most cases declining, habitats in our countryside. It no longer feels enough to simply admire and represent the beauty of nature, it has become our role to also highlight the need to protect it.

Our aim is to draw the viewers attention to the places between the concrete and the cultivated, the habitats that are essential for the survival of our native wildlife and to our own.

The fluidity of the glass represents well the movement of the plants and intuitively we have amplified this connection by creating intentionally undulating forms. The resulting vessels are specimens, containing the essence of a small part of a larger infrastructure seen at a particular moment, noticed, acknowledged and preserved.

Sketches and photographs from our visits provide the content for the intricate surfaces of the vessels, applied using hand cut stencil and sand carving. The title of each piece is the National Grid reference of the location and the date that it was observed.

These pieces are at the Pool House Gallery as part of the contemporary craft exhibition, From where I'm Standing, curated by Jo Swait June 16^th – July 17^th

Waters Edge. Are a group of vessels made in response to the 325 acres of Wetlands that are expertly and successfully managed and conserved at Slimbridge Wetland Centre on the Severn Estuary. The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust has nine centres around the country where they undertake research and conservation.

In February this year we visited the Wetland centre and, under supervision, were given access to the wild areas and permission to collect plant samples from the waters edge and surrounding areas.

These stone forms were created following our visit to Greystones Nature reserve, a place whose history stretches back 6,000 years. Here the Gloucestershire Wildlife trust carefully manage and preserve the land to ensure that wildlife thrives.

In particular their Hay meadows, an endangered habitat, support a stunning range of animal, plants and insects. We gained special permission to collect plant specimens around the Hay meadows and to photograph the meadows themselves.

As with many conservation environments there is a sense of nurture, of caretaking, in response we created these stone forms, shapes of the ground and passage of time, wrapped and bound by the encircling plants.

This week we delivered a small collection of Floral pieces to the Painswick Rococo gardens. They will be on display and for sale in their shop during the summer sculpture exhibitition, Art Unbound.

The exhibition of contemporary art has been designed to embrace the natural beauty and creative energy of the rococo period and runs until the 8th September.

This month we have recently completed a group of new sand carved bowls and vases inspired by the plant collections at The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The designs including Orchid and Iris, were delivered this week and are on display and for sale in their shop.