Be Intrigued by the Smaller Treasures of the Heart Shaped Island with Helene Boyer

Tasmanian Landscapes Provide the Stimulus

Tasmanian marine and terrestrial landscapes are the usual stimulus for investigation in most of my work.

Valuing the Smaller Things

I am especially drawn to the miraculous diversity to be found in “the smaller things” – past and present sculpture series have focused on nudibranchs, our marine reefs, native plants, fungi, lichen, moss and slimemoulds and orchids.

I cannot go for a walk without noticing the smaller ‘treasures’, constantly taking pics, and my sub conscious stores these experiences away for when I am working in the flame and creating forms.

A Love for Glass

I had always loved glass and wanted to explore it so received a small kiln for my 50th and enrolled in a five day bead making course to learn about the material.

As soon as I started melting the glass in the flame I was hooked!

With no training available in Tasmania, I gradually became a self-taught flame-worker and sculptor, assisted by the university of Youtube and experimentation.

Although I was introduced to some techniques through bead making, and continue to create glass jewellery as well as some kiln-fired elements, my chosen medium of expression is 3D sculpture comprised chiefly of flame-worked glass.

A Glass Maker’s Studio in Tasmania

My studio space at the Russell St Studios in Inveresk, Launceston, contains my flame-working bench with torch and tools and stores of glass rod and tubing.

Adjacent to the bench is my small table top sandblaster and compressor.

A table has work in progress, a slow progression of processes, for example, glass forms coloured with glass paints waiting to be fired, sandblasted forms awaiting wax pencils, part-constructed assemblages balanced with foam or tape.

Exploring the Relationship Bewteen the Natural World and the Human Spirit

In my works, unique flame-worked transparent or opaque glass forms, often detailed with painting and mark-making, are assembled to create a landscape/world that explores the relationship between the natural world and the human spirit.

I am also very interested in how I might incorporate a kinetic element or capacity for movement into my sculptures.

The Dangers of Working with Glass

Manipulating fire/heat to shape a melting material in flame at very high temperatures using gravity and breath, is dangerous and requires full concentration but it is also meditative when you are in the zone.

My highly detailed sculptures are deliberately smaller in scale and I love to draw the viewer into the work and to enable them to discover further elements as they traverse it.

Although I carefully research flora, fungi, creatures and habitats, my sculpted glass forms are usually more suggestive than strictly realistic and many also arise from my imagination.

Manipulating Light, Colour and Translucence

My chosen medium of glass means that I am drawn to the expressive potential and manipulation of light, colour and translucence.

Glass is a unique amorphous material –a solid that can be made liquid, shaped, achieve solidity again and then be melted and remade once more.

It also requires the glass artist to be constantly aware of the potential for harm/injury in working with flame and with very high temperatures, processes requiring good ventilation, and also with a material that can break or cut if not handled carefully and safely.

You Need Resilience to Be a Glassie

‘Glassies’ also need to be resilient as they may spend much time on creating a form only to have it crack or shatter in the final moments.

However, there is very little glass wasted in my practice as I am committed to re-using or re-melting any glass elements that break or are not used in a sculpture in future work.

A Love for Soda-lime Glass

I utilise both Soda-lime Glass (soft glass which melts at a lower temperature) and Borosilicate Glass (requires a higher temperature to melt and copes better with changes in temperature, an example brand is Pyrex).

Beginning as rods and tubes of various sizes, these special glasses are able to be sculpted and blown in the flame of a gas-fired or a gas and oxygen mix ‘torch’ before being annealed in a kiln to remove any tension in the glass, thus guarding against breakages.

A favourite of Venetian masters, Soda-lime Glass already comes in many lovely colours. It is often used for bead making and for creating small detailed sculptural forms that can be added to assemblages.

Mixing It Up with Clear Glass

Although colours are available in Borosilicate Glass too, my larger sculptural elements are usually formed in clear glass and then I might add subtle colour or texture to the glass surface through engraving, through sandblasting and wax pencil or through painting and firing with glass paints.

As well as creating sculptures in the flame, I also sometimes add kiln-fired elements to my assemblages, particularly using the pate de verre technique where small grains of glass and glass powders are layered then fused in the kiln.

My glass assemblages may also include painted and textured clay or natural objects that reference the environmental context of the subject matter.

Exploring Botanica Exotica

An ongoing Series for me are the variously sized assemblages of ‘Botanica Exotica’ where tableaux are captured under glass like the scientific specimen displays of the 19th century.

If mankind doesn’t act now on the challenges of climate change, if more of our precious and beautiful botanicals become extinct, they will be seen only as rare specimens in scientific collections.

Glass Scultpural Growth

These sculptures have become larger and more detailed as I have developed my technique and particularly since I have acquired a torch able to heat thicker borosilicate glass.

I am now also including kinetic elements in my work and last year I created my first ‘mobile’ hanging sculpture which is comprised of seven ‘floating’ Bluebottle organisms; a work that hangs from the ceiling.

Allow Yourself to Grow 

Be open to challenging yourself, to learning from others, to experimenting with new ways as well as practising techniques.

Ask friends/colleagues whose aesthetic advice you value to give you helpful feedback.

Stay true to what makes you enjoy making art and don’t listen too much to your inner critic that prevents you from having a go, fearing failure.

Finding Helene Boyer at Glass Artist Exhibitions

In the past five years, I have been exhibited in state, national and international galleries and my work acquired by local, national and international collectors.

A large domed work was chosen for the 2019 Tom Bass figurative sculpture prize exhibition in Sydney, my sculpture and jewellery has been regularly exhibited at the Nolan Gallery in Hobart, I had my first solo exhibition at the Cradle Mountain Wilderness Gallery in 2020 celebrating Tasmanian fungi and slimemoulds and a sculpture from the Exotica Botanica Series was chosen for the Henry Jones Art Prize exhibition 2021.

In 2021-22, I was the only Australian artist to be included in the prestigious “Glass Lifeforms ” exhibition at Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts USA.

This international event celebrates the best biological glass work made in the spirit of the famous 19th and 20th century models of invertebrates and plants made by the father and son team, Rudolf and Leopold Blaschka, for the Harvard University’s Botanical Museum.

Two of my sculptures were recently exhibited in a Sawtooth Ari-curated vitrine at the UTAS Library at Inveresk and later this year I am included in the exhibition, ‘Strange Nature’ at QVMAG Launceston.

As an artist whose creative outcomes are time and process intensive, I have chosen not to be represented by a gallery or to focus on another solo exhibition at this point but I take on a limited number of commissions and am enjoying the freedom to create when inspired and to explore new processes.