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Sara Carlisle takes joy in the small pleasures in life. The warmth and mischief of a pet cat. The subtle beauty and resilience of wild flowers and weeds, those plant species who persist in showing up uninvited in our gardens and urban spaces. She captures her love of these things in her glass art.

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Her work draws on her own personal experience as a visual artist – she discovered botanical painting in the early 2000’s, and very much enjoyed it, but then fell in love with glass, and began the journey that led to her becoming a glass blower in recent years. Finally, the wheel has come full cycle, and she has reached the point where she can include her love of botanical subjects (especially weed species, which are unjustly scorned!) in her glass art.  At the same time, she has discovered that she is able to translate her love for cats (she lives with three) into visual imagery. 

 

Both subjects bring joy. Weeds, because they have a beauty in their details that is often overlooked because of their ability to thrive uninvited, and cats, because they insinuate their way into your heart despite their independence. She paints the glass with enamel, then removes material to create her imagery, which is melted into the glass by fire polishing in a glass furnace.

 

In a separate line of work, Sara plays with form and colour, making both functional and purely sculptural pieces.  Freed from the constraints of creating a canvas for enamel designs, she can let the glass move as it will, seeing where heat, gravity and air will take her.

 

Sara is currently studying glass blowing at Sheridan College, in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. She hopes her work brings as much joy to the viewer as it does to herself.