Maarten Vrolijk likes to say that he’s not a glassmaker, a ceramicist, or a textile designer; instead, the Amsterdam artist works in all three mediums. His reluctance to identify as just one is rooted less in his practice and more in his philosophy. “I want to feel the freedom to create what I want and what I need,” he says. “Being open is important to making new languages in art.”
He seems to have done that with his luminous, shard-encrusted glass vessels. These oversized glass-on-glass works are, according to the artist, “a fight with the process, a fight with the fire.” Working with a small team, Vrolijk builds each one through a painstaking process of breaking, heating, and fusing glass fragments onto blown forms. It requires a precise alignment of temperature and timing. “I am bleeding when I work on it,” he says. “But in the process, because of the heat and the fire, all those sharp elements become smooth and they look like diamonds. It was a ‘wow!’ the first time I did it.” Learn more about Maarten’s journey and see his works here.