Fragile Coast. 2020

Glass pieces: ‘Fragile Coast 1 and 4’.

Produced for the exhibition SHIFT, sponsored by Somerset Wildlife to draw attention to the ecology of the Somerset Coast.

In January 2020 I became part of a group of Somerset artsits, researching the coast which stretches from Weston in the north, to Porlock Weir to the west. The land here was formed over a hundred million years ago, mostly during the Triassic and Jurassic periods, and fragments from these tower over the beaches or tumble down to be worn into slabs and pebbles as the Ades work over them. They were formed when the landmasses of the earth’s continents were roughly over the equator, before they slowly moved north and split, forming the continents we know today.

Water also played a part, laying down layers of sediment over millennia, some of it metamorphized through heat, and also shaped by rivers and rivulets which created the linear striations in the rocks found on West Beach at Watchet. Having worked a little with glass fusion and annealing, I saw the potential of expressing the movement of rock and water using heat and cutting of glass as my tools. I felt that the fragility of glass was a good way of talking about the coast here, as it crumbles through weathering and water erosion. I hope that the forms take on the movement of water, but also the structure of the rocks with their rod- like internal patterns, an uneasy marriage of rigid with curve, rock with water, strength and power with fragile matter.

Fragile Coast 2 and 3 did not survive the kiln, sadly, but this seems fitting for such a project.