Talking Out Your Glass Podcast

As a trained scientist prior to creating with glass, Amanda Simmons is fascinated by how our world works and how it can be fixed. Inspired by subjects as diverse as the physics of our expanding universe or how drugs function on a molecular level, the artist has been discovering new ways to explore the properties of mass, heat, time and gravity in the creation of 3D vessel forms. Intense color and patterns result when opaque glass powders react to light, varying in translucency as the form elongates during the firing process. Works are finished using many coldworking processes to shape and mark the glass including sandblasting, hand lapping, diamond point and wheel engraving. Simmons states: “My practice as a glass artist has become a conduit to further learning by making objects in a material whose language I understand, addressing subjects that interest me in the natural world. Our achievements as a species are impressive but equally frustrating in the cycles of social and environmental injustice, from which