Member’s Spotlight

Charles Sharpe is an artist whose work with glass has emerged after decades of designing and making in wood. The vibrancy of coloured glass was a revelation to him and it has inspired him to make a body of completely new work. Other inspiration for Charles has included the highly coloured textiles made by Kaffe Fassett, Zaha Hadid’s contemporary architecture and the landscape photographs of Charlie Waite. He’s also intrigued and influenced by utilitarian objects such as the chrome headlights of a classic car for the sheer joy of their shape and line. Charles employs meticulous precision cutting skills, honed from decades of woodwork experience, to make uniquely patterned pieces of glass. In the example above, he used over 1000 individual, precisely produced, segments of glass, then, by using a highly unusual construction method he is able to make glass which is simultaneously very controlled and excitingly innovative.