INTERVIEW
We love your beautiful creations but tell us a bit about the lady behind them. I’ m Claire and I live in Staffordshire with my lovely husband Tony and my fantastic( and very demanding) cats, aka“ Fur kids”. I ' m lucky enough to be a full time glass artist and jewellery designer. I ' m currently living in a built up area at the moment but I am country girl at heart, being brought up in Kent, then onto live in Wales before I came to Staffordshire. I love getting out and about in the UK and‘ experiencing’ and connecting to the landscape. It may be hard doing this living in an urban setting, but we are at least very lucky to live only a short trip from the Peak District, Cheshire and North Wales, so we try to get‘ out there’ as much as we practically can. I ' m also a Pagan and environmentalist and this is central to my creativity as well as my everyday life. My spirituality, pantheist beliefs, and love of nature and the earth play a big part in my inspiration.
Have you always been creative or did your talent evolve over time? I ' ve always been involved with arts and crafts, and as a child I was always drawing pictures or doing something creative. This carried on through my whole education and after school I went on to study Fine Arts along with English at university. I became a full time jewellery designer 10 years ago, including designing jewellery for a high street store for a while. I got into making glass beads in 2006 so I could use them in my handmade jewellery, however the love for making them overtook my life so I just focused on glass and that is when Rowanberry Glass Art was born. In the past 2 years my love for making jewellery has been rekindled, this time using etched copper and metal clays, so I changed my name to Rowanberry Designs to reflect this new direction. My style has always been pretty much the same whatever medium I have worked with, mixing a love for nature with a love for figurative detail. My biggest change in my creativity was the change from making glass beads purely for people to make jewellery with towards making a bead as a collectable piece of art as itself. Now I approach each bead as if it was a wearable painting or sculpture.
What is it that you enjoy most about your work? I love being my own boss. I’ ve suffered with some health problems for well over 18 years now, which has meant that“ regular” employment is not an option for me and working at your own pace is important to me as regular resting is a must. As for glass there ' s always something new to learn and always something new and exciting to try out. Glass is a mesmerising medium to work and always presents a challenge to you in one way or another. Using it is an ever evolving skill and I find that exhilarating. www. creative-crafting. com 7