My Glass Obsession
Born in Bremen, Germany in 1973 I moved to New Zealand with my family in the late 80s and have lived here (bar a brief stint in the UK) ever since. Having gone to university in Auckland I became an English and Media teacher but never went back after having had children. Nowadays I live with my partner in Torbay and together we run our regenerative landscaping company ‘Untangled Landscapes’ whilst I moonlight as a glass artist and also run my fused glass moulds, workshops & art company ‘Glass Obsession.’
I come from a family of architects and toy makers and I blame this genetic material for my entirely all-encompassing obsession with everything glass and a need to express myself in a creative fashion. The landscaping satisfies a part of this but ever since having had a significant accident some years ago I am very much part time in that area and the glass has become a major creative outlet in its stead.
From a very young age until this present day I have always collected coloured glass, arranging it in pleasing groupings and driving the kids to distraction as they feel that all this glass everywhere is an earthquake hazard. When I discovered the world of glass fusing, a natural extension of my mosaic work, an entire universe of prisms suddenly made itself available to me and it quickly became a major pastime. There are infinite possibilities of colour, shape and texture.
Glass is magic, neither a solid nor a liquid but a combination of the two. Alchemy!
The retailing of fused glass art moulds was borne out of necessity, turns out that there is a woeful lack of supply especially in New Zealand and even Australia, and buying one or two moulds (or ‘molds’ in America) from the States or Europe is an exorbitant and time consuming process. www.glassobsession.co.nz is the product of a need for moulds, the joy of teaching creative processes and the resulting glass art itself.
Svea Berling
