Deborah Timperley

Glass artist Deborah Timperley loves the whole creative journey of her rocky sculptures, from the inspiration to the making. Everything starts with her love of landscape. Deborah wants to make pieces which are evocative of the land, sky and sea. She contrasts the defined edges of rocky outcrops, waterfalls, tree lines, stone walls etc, with the softness of adjacent vegetation. In her work the colours echo the surroundings, and sometimes pick out some rays of sunlight.

So with this inspiration from nature in mind Deborah plans each composition with tentative sketches, evolving into a design which she follows quite closely. Once happy, it’s time for her to start constructing with glass. Deborah use billets of coloured glass which she breaks up into chunks using a glass cutter and a hammer to make pieces to correspond with her drawing. This is her glass paint palette.  She builds up the sculpture, looking for strong colour combinations of adjacent blocks – when the glass melts in the kiln the colours merge giving a sort of water colour effect which can be very beautiful. Deborah also wants to create a chunky relief – this works particularly well with Waterfall where the water falls into a pool at the base.

Then the work goes into the kiln. The large pieces are heavy to move, up to 14K. Deborah packs a mould mix all around the glass, tight in some places, looser in others, so the glass has room to move – suggesting the softness of moss and grasses around the rocks. Large pieces are in the kiln for 5 days. The glass fully melts at the top temperature of 820C. The kiln is programmed to bring the temperature down slowly and she doesn’t unload the sculpture until it’s cold, so the glass doesn’t crack. Then the piece is cleaned of the plaster, this is ‘the big reveal’ – has it worked? Then Deborah finishes with some cold working on the flat bed grinder and a hand held drill. And finally the piece is photographed.

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