Roslyn de Bussey (Australia)

 
As a recognised Australian glass artist and educator, I’ve exhibited my work globally since 1984 including in the USA, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands and New Zealand. My work is represented in collections throughout Australia and overseas including the Frank Howarth Collection, Queensland Art Gallery, Piiponnen Collection in Finland and the Sklarse Museum in Czech Republic.
As a committed Canberra artist, I have been recognised by the glass fraternity as a professional maker and educator. My standing as a contemporary practitioner is evidenced in my work being showcased as an independent artist in the then prestigious Ranamok Glass Prize and the Bombay Sapphire Design Prize. Not many in this country can use vitreous enamels and lusters as I can do. It does take years of practice, patience and resilience to master a variety of technical processes.
As a Craft ACT Professional Accredited Artist, I’ve been further recognised by peers and colleagues for my excellence, technical skills and ability to create glass forms that shine in their own light using historical technical processes in a contemporary way.
There is always something new and exciting to learn regarding my chosen medium being glass and one’s own ancestral history. A wonderful event such as DNA testing connected me to my ancestors who were also bespoke artists in a variety of mediums on my maternal grandfathers’ side of the family. Not only were my ancestors bespoke guilds people, they also were a part of the now historical glass guilds from both Europe and the UK.
I was truly surprised to realise here I am in the 21st century working with glass as some of my ancestors had done before me. I discovered this with the help of my DNA cousin to find out about my origins and our connections. We had met online 5 years earlier and had stayed in touch through our love of glass. We had more in common than either of us knew and was a wonderful surprise to discover.
As an educator I have many years of experience. I have been trained by master craftspeople including the late Ann Dybka (recipient of the Australia Council Emeritus Award and Order of Australia, she was the first glass artist to receive these awards and was nominated by me), as an apprentice in Architectural Glass and through my studies at the ANU School of Art under the late Klaus Moje. I have always reciprocated my learning experiences, giving back to community through teaching and lecturing on a variety of subjects.
LAPPET FORMS ---- A Lappet is an old English term meaning a flap on a skirt or a tent and was created so that I could use the form as a canvas for painting. On a technical aspect, although the form looks quite simple, the work has taken many years to achieve the shape of the form. I have just kept on going back to it to form and refine the various aspect of the slumping process until I achieved my goal. In this series of works, the imagery that I have used to paint the surface of the work in lustres and enamels was derived from watching weather man-made electrical storms and is my interpretation of these occurrences. Initially when I started working on this concept of the Lappet Forms as a vehicle for painting expression, my first works were to interpret fabrics onto the glass surface. At present Lappet Forms are evolving to incorporate aspects of the landscape, i.e. the use of corrugation as an element and lichen in other works. All works are ongoing.
ARCHITECTONIC WORKS ---- Architecture, architects, cultures, countries, nature, the arts, human rights and history are some of my inspirations when making any Architectonic works and they are usually labour intensive from the beginning of the concept, the painting and fusing, including the final processes of grinding and polishing to achieve the final form.   In the Architecture Series the works were inspired was by the architect Le Corbusier's Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamps, France. It was the Bauhausian era of architectural design and one of the most brilliant Chapels I have seen.