Heather Kremen

Heather Kremen is a glassblower, artist, and educator. She is currently the owner of Amokura Glass in Rotorua, where she creates fine art glass, elegant functional homeware, and unique decorative objects.

Heather began blowing glass in 2007 when she took her first workshop and she hasn’t stopped since. She has trained and worked in blown and kiln-formed glass, although these days she spends most of her time in the hot shop and teaching.

Heather is passionate about glass art and works to share that passion as broadly as possible, from answering questions from visitors to the gallery to teaching and mentoring aspiring artists. She hopes one day to expand Amokura Glass into a glass school where artists can learn blown, fused, and cast glass techniques.

In her fine art practice, Heather’s current work incorporates fused and blown glass into intricately patterned vessels. These pieces are on display in the gallery at Amokura Glass and have been displayed in Rotorua and across Aotearoa.

Carmine: A blown glass vessel comprised of two bubbles joined together while hot (incalmo). The bottom half is a colour and pattern study using red murinne (small 'precious' tiles of glass), and the top half is pure red. Both halves have been coldworked, carving away the surface of the glass to give it texture and a matte look unusual in blown glass. While this piece looks smooth, it is entirely comprised from thousands of sheets of glass, joined together and remelted over and over to create the finished piece.

Emotional Tapestry: Most of my pieces are meditative exercises. I created this piece as a work where I could express my feelings, but also look back and think about them, process them and hopefully gain clarity from them. When viewing this piece, think about what emotions you have stirring around inside you? Is it joy, love, hope, contentment? Or, are you swayed by anger, passion, fear, regret, hatred, or loss. Do emotions give you strength or are you overwhelmed by them? Do you bottle them up? How do they change over time? The bright, vivid patterns in this work pull your eyes in a spiraling clockwise direction. The colours and patterns amp up and up until your eyes reach the 'center' the calming field of grey, where your eyes can rest and meditate on what you've been through. Each strong pattern is walled off, showing the stages you go through in processing your experiences. While you can take in the piece as a whole, you can also meditate on each segment. Let your eyes wander deeper into the patterns, seeing the small lines and bubbles that show off the construction of this piece. Look into it and through it, seeing the depth that is behind each small block that makes up our feelings. Now take a moment, and breathe.