The original pieces for Strange Music, Rough Magic, were commissioned by renowed flameworker and teacher Diana East for the exhibition, Tempest – part of the 2008 Festival of Glass. Diana asked a number of glass artists – many of whom do not usually work in the bead form – to make a single bead exploring themes drawn from Shakespeare’s ‘Tempest’. Fabricated from glass and oxidized silver, these tiny theatres of the soul explore something of the twin possibilities of captivity and escape that are so much a part of the Tempest and its island world.
Victoria Scholes 