Statement

When we gaze down from a plane at city lights at night, we feel like giants. Then, looking up at the stars, we feel like tiny specks amongst them. That a person can feel like a god and like a speck of stardust at one time, in one body and mind: what marvels us humans are!

Glass Cathedrals, miniature worlds in boxes, are inspired by this wonder, and the power of the tiny to communicate big ideas and feelings.

I’ve always been interested in the paradox of being human. That we can feel both big and small at the same time, be paralysed by self-doubt and buoyed with confidence, act with brutal selfishness and overflowing compassion, be bursting with life and then, in the end, be very much dead.

We spend a lot of energy trying to show that we are one thing or the other, but these opposites co-exist in every one of us. I believe it’s the very essence of being human and humane, and one of the things we all have in common.

Glass Cathedrals are somehow able to hold these contradictions in a way that is friendly and inspiring, and I think I know why…

Looking at the small people in Glass Cathedrals going about their brilliant, absurd lives, we feel compassion: first for them, then for ourselves, and finally for others (poor you, poor me, poor us! lucky you, lucky me, lucky us!). This creates a sort of secular ‘state of grace’ that allows room for empathy, and curiosity. In this space, old certainties loosen their grip and contradictions become easier to accept.

When perspectives begin to shift, anything is possible.