Michele Oberdieck

Glassblowing

About

Michèle Oberdieck specialises in blown glass inspired by natural forms and organic processes, exploring balance and asymmetry through shape, surface and colour. Using sculptural forms as a gesture, or expressive mark, often grouping a few pieces together, a narrative is created.
Focusing on the experience of light, Michèle combines gradations of transparency and tone with a more opaque element, capturing a sense of movement and fluidity, such as the luminosity of colours found in the sky as day turns to dusk.
In an attempt to recreate the organic shapes found in nature, she actively works against symmetry, one of the core processes of blown glass.

Contact

  • Double Leaf Branch By Michèle Oberdieck, unique blown glassw
  • by Michèle Oberdieck, blown glass vessels, photo by Sylvain Deleu
  • Hedeoma L.45cm Unique blown glass by Michèle Oberdieck, photo by Sylvain Deleu
  • Michele Oberdiek Graal Vessels, blown glass forms
“Capturing colour and form to create movement, and character.”

Michele Oberdieck

Process

Drawing and colour work is very important to Oberdieck when starting a new idea. From her drawings she often makes a coiled clay model to see how the form will work in 3D , before going to the glass hotshop to try the shapes out.
She creates mark making and patterns, using the classic Swedish technique of Graal where overlayed cups of glass colours are cut through using engraving wheels. Traditionally used as a technique to express narrative, she employs this method to examine the relationship between the positive and negative ground.
The balance of transparency and opacity, and the effect of light being diffused through pattern, affects depth, and creates an almost optical illusion. The opening of the vessels draws in light to illuminate it from within.

Services

  • commissions
  • designing for industry

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