Behind The Mask

Trading as Aquarelle Design

Member of The Chelsea Art Society (CAS), The Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain (APA) and The Contemporary Glass Society (CGS)

Teresa Chlapowski started exploring sculpture by using clay, but over the last few years, she has discovered glass and has started to experiment with it, pushing it to its limits.

She has discovered casting with glass, both in the kiln using plaster/quartz moulds and sand casting in a hot glass studio. Plaster/quartz moulds offer a lot of detail and can be open moulds or lost wax. Sand casting is literarily making an open mould out of sand (and Bentonite) and then either pouring the glass in, or casting with glass billets in the kiln. This method retains some of the sand when taken out of the mould and the shape is more indistinct, giving a rougher, more ancient look to the glass, as though just discovered in an archaeological dig.

Her ideas come from dance and movement, to photography, ancient art and archaeology, travelling and new cultures. Usually the ideas come first and the media second.