London Craft Week 2023 has arrived! We can't wait for everyone to see our exhibition Seven: Seven Decades, Seven Disciplines, Seven Makers. It's open 8-14 May, with a Late Open until 7pm on Thursday 11 May and a Meet the Maker event Saturday 13 May 12-4. The exhibition features makers Lise Herud Braten, Matthew Paré, Michèle Oberdieck, Marian Ripoll, Claire Malet, Kuniko Maeda and Margo Selby.
To properly celebrate LCW, we'll be featuring some of our Makers so you will have an opportunity to learn more about the artists, their pieces and their processes. First up is our featured Glass Maker, Michèle Oberdieck!
Michèle's exhibited works with CAA during London Craft Week are a combination from the Ostfriesia series, and recently exhibited work from Collect Open shown in March at Somerset House.
Recently exhibited Fantasy Plants from Collect Open include 'Imagined Laurel'. The Fantasy Plant series are imagined plants of the future, inspired by visits to Kew Gardens Herbarium looking at extinct and newly discovered plants as well as conversations with plant researchers. These new works are meant to question the effects of climate change on our environment.
Oberdieck translates her gestural sketches into fluid sculptural works rich in colour using hand-blown glass-making techniques to create her vision of imagined plants of the future.
Born in Canada, Michèle Oberdieck has lived in Britain for nearly two decades, training as a textile designer at the Glasgow School of Art, where she fell in love with the architecture of Charles Rennie Macintosh, particularly the stained-glass windows.
Plant life and flowers have always been an inspiration reflected in her screen-printed textile work. Her background in hand printing and dying silks influenced her colour sense when she first approached blown glass while embarking on an MA at the Royal College of Art in the Ceramic and Glass Department. Her work is sold across the USA, Japan, South Korea, Italy and Britain.
The Ostfriesia series was inspired by family trips Ostfriesland where the North Sea breaks shattering in a lattice of canals, grassland and dunes. They reveal the delicate colourings of soft greys, delft blue and celadon evident in the wide horizon, and flat landscape along the Friesland Peninsula.
Vessels include Haar, Ostfriesia Blue Distraction Vessel, Spring Green Distraction and Shell Graal. Colours nod towards the Dutch and Chinese histories with porcelain in particular Delft blue and celadon.
Inspired by natural forms and organic structures, Michèle Oberdieck explores balance and asymmetry through shape, surface and colour. Using sculptural forms as a gesture, or expressive mark, often combining a few pieces together, a narrative is created.
EXPLORE MORE GLASS FROM CONTEMPORARY APPLIED ARTS
Tracy Nicholls, Riven, Helen Slater Stokes, Copse & Phil Atrill, Horizon Abstract - Medium.
