One of the larger pieces I made specifically for this exhibition is the ‘Compendium’ piece shown here. This 18 piece glass wall map, took its layout from Gerard Mercator’s World Map of 1569. This map was nominated as one of the seminal maps in History of the World in Twelve Maps by Jerry Brotton (2013). Mercator’s map was the first to be drawn on the projection which still bears his name today.

I wanted to reference this map which, together with the two beautiful globes in the Mercator Museum, form the key exhibit. The glass map I made in an ode to the above map, is based on the dimensions and colouring of the original Mercator map and is overlaid with text from Mercator’s Books catalogue of the eponymous exhibition in the Museum in 1994. The catalogue details the books auctioned from Mercator’s private library after his death and showcase his interest and education in a broad range of subjects; from theology, history, maths, medicine and dictionaries.

As part of my academic work at the University of Sunderland, I undertake research. through which I have had to find a way of articulating what it is that I do on a daily basis when working on architectural glass projects.

As the majority of my work is site-specific, the first thing I turn to when working on a project is a map or a floor plan followed by research into the location, history, context, the people… in order to build up  a sense of place. This sense of place was explored in depth in the Liverpool Map commission for the  Museum of Liverpool ; a multi-layered glass map embedding the many different facets of its cultural identity into the 17 layers of glass.

However, what has always interested me has been the connection between the universal and the specific.  I always thought that what defined my work was the complimentary opposition; of heaven and earth, light and dark… Making the Liverpool Map however, defined a more particular interest in mapping; both in maps as artefacts and mapping as a method of collating information. Maps deal with both the global and the local. Powers of Ten is a film by the artist designer couple Charles and Ray Eames (1977) and embodies the sense of ‘interconnectedness’ of scale – of the global and the local. The ethos of Map-i is based on this premise of interconnectedness: how the observable universe can be broken down into infinitesimally small particles, applicable at both the micro and the macro level, always of course observed from a human point of view. The human factor of space; that which can observed, walked, experienced, noted and calculated is referenced by the ‘i’ in Map-i and became defined in the Micro Macro piece above (2010). The Map-i project was developed as a framework for a long term investigation into notions of space and place within which a series of projects could be developed.

The Map-i: Mercator Revisited exhibition and book is the first is this series and you can find out more about the Mercator project on other parts of this blog.

At the end of March I went to Belgium for the well attended re-opening of the Mercator Museum on the 24th March and delivered a talk on Tuesday 26th of March to a gathering of interested parties, friends and family as well as the launch of the Map-i book published by  Snoeck. It is a lovely book and details the content of the exhibition of a new collection of glass pieces inspired by the Mercator Museum collection in Sint-Niklaas which will run until 15th of December 2013.

Above you can see a detail shot of a tiny glass Mercator map made using the traditional glass making technique called murini where glass cane is pulled and then sliced into slivers of glass which are then normally collated into  a new piece. Based on a technique pioneered by Leverhulme scholar and artist Scott Chaseling using the expertise and equipment at the University of Sunderland (2007) I developed this further by cutting the Mercator map from an

opaque and transparent colour glass and making a composite image which was stacked, fused and cut again and then heated in the furnace and pulled into cane by expert glass blower /artist James Maskrey. The pulling of the cane miniaturises the image thereby creating a tiny little glass map of only 30x30mm. When making the map, we had to rather cavalier with the geography of the world; the UK was discarded, Japan dismissed, Tasmania and most of the East Asian islands and countries disappeared. This is juxtaposed with a larger map of the world (78x78cm) with a geography that is far more correct and recognisably so.

This micro macro version of the world map continues the theme of Micro Macro piece.

More information to follow on more pieces from the new collection in the following weeks. Meanwhile, I am in the process of developing a few new projects following on from this with a showcase coming up in October a the National Glass Centre.

The exhibition will run at the Mercator Museum in Sint-Niklaas in Belgium from Sunday 24th March until 15th of December 2013 so there is plenty time to pay a visit.

The collection of new work is inspired by the work and life of Gerard Mercator (1512-1594), the famous Flemish cartographer whose projection changed the ways maps are drawn and is still used today. The 16th century maps, globes and atlases from the collection formed the basis for a 21st century interpretation, using glass as a medium of choice. Over the next few weeks I will highlight the pieces online so you can all have a look and I will detail the thoughts behind each piece. Meanwhile, on Tuesday 26th of March, I will be giving a talk at the Mercator Museum at 8pm – free – about the inspiration, processes and ideas behind this new collection of work.

To coincide with the exhibition, the Map-i; Mercator Revisited book will be published on Sunday 24th March by Snoeck.

A further piece will be unveiled later in the summer at the Museum; a glass globe, which is a collaboration with a cartographer.

The body of work has been made possible with a grant from Creative Scotland, funding and support from the University of Scotland and of course the enthusiasm and support from the Mercator Museum staff.

This new body of work has provided a significant new direction in my work; using maps and mapping, new technologies and techniques and forging new links and collaborating with some great people and organisations. There are more plans afoot for later in the year, more of which later…

There is a lovely YouTube clip here where you can see the glass sheets being made.

The ends of the muff is cut off to make a glass sleeve (hence the word muff) which is cut along the long edge and flattened out in the heat of the kiln. The traditional glass sheet produced this way is used in traditional stained glass and comes in a huge variety of delicious colours and textures.

We will be using some of this lovely glass in the stained glass course this weekend at idagos glass.

The class size is small and comfortable and will be held in the idagos glass studio in the lovely Scottish Borders village of Lilliesleaf.

If you would like to join us, please book online here.

Thanks to a concerted effort by many people who have helped me during the last few months, a new body of work has started to emerge in the last few weeks. There is still quite a lot of work to finish but it is great to see some conclusion taking shape. This weekend, a photoshoot of the first new finished pieces were taken by my friend and excellent photographer Jurgen Doom so you can see a preview here. The images will appear in a book published by Snoeck which will coincide with the opening of the exhibition Map-i; Mercator Revsited, opening on 24th March at the Mercator Museum in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium.

Squaring the Circle and Circling the Square are two pieces visualising the speed of travel and communication respectively ; two factors which have contributed to the increase in scientific knowledge.

It has been snowing outside, just little wisps of snowflakes delicately fluttering to the ground, and inside the studio is nice and warm as the kiln has been on again. Inside the kiln are some more component pieces cooling down for the two ‘pole’ plates I am making, the two final pieces in the series of works for the Mercator Revisited exhibition.

Tomorrow I am travelling down to Sunderland, weather permitting, to get a whole batch of glass pieces cut;  I am looking forward to many glass pieces taking on their final shapes. The green piece fired with text will be cut into a heart shape, based on the Werner Stabius projection and the text is a quote from ‘The Road’ by Carthy McCormack, an apocalyptic story.

On Wednesday I picked up the 14 components which make up the scaled down rapid prototyped model made at A-Map in Sunderland. There are two pole caps and twelve ‘gores’ or segments which make up the proposed glass globe. Over the last few days I have been trying to get the details right as to how to put this together and make the globe work. It would of course be much easier to simply make the globe in two halves, as I have done previously but that is not the challenge of this project! It has been a long process to get to this stage; many more steps to come.

On Thursday I also found out that my work was selected for the ART Shanghai 2013, which means my work will wing its way to China later in the year. So, the new work is going global in more ways than one so this is excellent news.