Chris Wood
Artist’s Statement
"My first project was, to design a light fitting and this shaped my journey of artistic discovery… I found I could work very directly with light, as a medium, I just needed to find the physical materials that enabled me to do this.”
Biography
I always wanted to be an artist, I adored drawing and making things. Dyslexia shaped my education and I left school with no qualifications and drifted into hairdressing, because that’s what my best friend decided to do. I loved the creative side of hairdressing and did this for 15 years, but there was always a deep need in me to create, that the hairdressing world couldn’t fulfil.
At 29 with fear and excitement in equal measure, I managed to secure a place on a 3D Design course at Middlesex Polytechnic in the mid 80s. My first project was to design a light fitting and this shaped my journey of artistic discovery. I found I could work very directly with light, as a medium, I just needed to find the physical materials that enabled me to do this. Glass is a material that is intrinsically, all about light and I began to explore the physical and visual qualities of the medium. This led me to study for an MA in Glass at Royal College of Art, London. Whilst there I worked on architectural scale projects dealing with light and space.“
After leaving the RCA and starting a family we moved to the Cambridgeshire Fens, an agricultural area of England. This previously submerged land was drained in the 1800’s, exposing an incredibly fertile flat landscape, now known as ‘The Fens’. The linear nature of this landscape was a great inspiration and had a major impact on my journey as an artist. I became fascinated with the ruler straight lines of bright green vegetation contrasting with the deep purple soil. Driving through the fens marked a turning point in my relationship with dichroic, a material I had been playing with for the previous 10 years. The minimal landscape inspired me to explore simple linear pattern making. As dichroic is a very visually complex material, I began to understand that simple repetition and pattern was the containing element that I needed to allow the material to speak for itself. Now I work with a variety of optical elements such as mirrors, lenses, water, smoke, steam, haze and anything else I can lay my hands on that enables me to manipulate light. “
Chris Wood’s medium is light. She uses a range of high and low-tech optical materials to harness patterns of light that suggest ephemeral glimpsed moments in the natural world. Her sculptures are simple arrangements creating kinetic patterns in response to the environments in which they are placed. Wood orders the accidental and makes us reflect on the experience of seeing.
Exhibitions
Wood produces innovative installations for gallery exhibition and has shown extensively throughout the UK and internationally. Her work is represented in a number of private collections as well as the Shanghai Museum of Glass.
Showing the single artwork
