A KILN INSTINCT: WHY I GAVE IT ALL UP FOR GLASS

I’ve always been interested in art and design. As a teenager, I spent far too much time in the materials aisle and was lucky to have people around me who encouraged me to pursue it. But I also really wanted to be rich. Not just comfortable, properly rich. So instead of going to art school, I studied Economics.

That led to a 12 year career in digital marketing, where I spent my time convincing people to want things they didn’t need, or maybe just selling my soul a little bit at a time. It was good money, and I got very good at it. But over time, the work started to feel hollow. After one too many strategy meetings and soul sapping projects, something snapped.

In my 30s, I finally walked away from the corporate world. I decided I didn’t want to make the sensible choice anymore. I wanted to do something that felt completely impractical, something that didn’t start with a spreadsheet or end with a client debrief. I wanted to make things with my hands. And glass, strange as it sounds, made perfect sense.

Why Glass?

Glass has never been an obedient material. It reflects, refracts, melts, shatters, and disappears depending on how you approach it. It behaves differently with heat, with pressure, with time. That unpredictability drew me in.

Today, I work with both hot and cold glass processes. Blowing, casting, cutting, mirroring, slumping. I’m interested in the tension between visibility and invisibility, in what glass hides and reveals. My pieces often reflect you, ignore you, or vanish the moment you lean in.

I called this blog A Kiln Instinct because that’s exactly what this journey has been. Not a careful plan, but a gut feeling. Something pulled me toward the furnace. It was loud, hot, impractical and somehow exactly what I needed.

Early Influence

One of the earliest and most powerful artistic influences for me was Olafur Eliasson. I first encountered his work as a teenager, walking into the Weather Project in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. It completely altered how I thought about space, light, and experience.

His use of optics and the natural characteristics of materials stuck with me. His mirror-based installations, especially the kaleidoscopic ones [link to an example], were a revelation. They weren’t just beautiful, they asked you to think about your own perception.

That influence can be seen in my own piece Spiegel im Spiegel, which explores similar ideas of reflection and disorientation. Mirrors often appear in my work, not just for their visual effects, but for the way they challenge the viewer’s role. Are you looking at the object or is it looking at you?

What I’m Making Now

I’m currently studying glass at The Estonian Academy of Arts, and my practice is focused on sculpture and glass objects that explore themes like optics, memory, play, and identity. I like ideas that start off as bad ones and slowly evolve into something strange but satisfying. That might mean a mirrored baby rattle, a disappearing reflection, or a slumped bottle masquerading as tableware.

If you want to see what I’m working on, visit the Artwork page. I also write about my creative process, experiments, and general hot glass chaos here on the Blog.

This is the life that found me. And at this point, I trust the instinct.