Sofia Athineou
Artist Statement
I am Greek and I live in the Waitakere Ranges with my family.
I am a devotee of art. I am a mixed media artist with an emphasis in glass,
a medium with many sensual and optical qualities. I love using glass to express
myself artistically. I love the way it looks and feels and the way it reflects and
distorts light. I capture passion and emotion by refracting the vibrant colours
of glass, through the forms I create. Natural patterns interest me infinitely.
My art reflects me, my life, my ideas, my beliefs. I have taken part in many
exhibitions and received four awards.
General statement for my latest group of works.
With my latest group of works, I started with organic forms and I became increasingly interested in showing elemental forces like wind, fire and water. Depicting movement particularly interested me while I made these works. The constant movement of these
elements is captured in my sculptures and enhanced by the play of light inside the glass.
The technical process of my work.
Initially I create my work in clay. When I am happy with my clay object I take a cast of it by building a plaster mold over it. I remove the clay and replace it with hot wax. When the wax cools down and solidifies I remove it from the mold, perfect it and calculate from it how much glass I need for my final object. Then I sit the wax on a clay reservoir and invest it in my final mold witch includes plaster and silica. I remove the wax either by steaming it out or by pulling it (depending on the shape of the object). I place my mold in the kiln with the glass sitting just above it in a flowerpot, close the kiln , program it and wait for minimum a week for the magic to happen. Inside the kiln the temperature rises up to 840 C to allow the glass to melt into the mold. Then the temperature ramps down in stages until it reaches 440 C for the anieling stage. It sits there for the temperature to become even throughout the piece, which eliminates stress from the crystal glass structure. When the kiln is in room temperature, the work is ready. The glass gets cleaned from the mold. Depending of the quality of the work, sometimes it needs to get cold worked with diamond tools and a final polish.
