2025
Exhibition Residencies
For me, the physical challenges of working with glass are an integral part of the creative thought process: ideas must go through an energetic ‘rite of passage’; they both shape and are shaped by the material. I was drawn to glass originally for its versatility as a sculptural material: earthy and ethereal, angular and amorphous, it offers a huge breadth of expressive possibilities. I also use found objects and other materials in combination with glass to create objects, installations and site-specific artworks. I try to approach all my work intuitively, in a way that allows me to explore themes that are personally resonant and often straightforwardly autobiographical. Early work focused on memory and how we interpret our own past. More recently, familiar objects from the domestic interior – folded blankets, pin cushions, etc. – are transformed by being recreated in glass. In current work the complexities of close personal relationships -love, envy, communication (or lack of), crisis and harmony - are delved into.
Overall dimensions approx.35x15cm, 2004
30x40x22cm, 2010
35x35x28cm, 2004
Born in Armagh in 1975, Louise Rice is an artist who uses glass as the primary medium in her sculpture and installations. Studying initially at NCAD, she went on to complete a BAHons Degree and Postgraduate Diploma in glass at Edinburgh College of Art. She continued her postgraduate studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam where she remained for four years, assisting glass artists Richard Price and Bibi Smit and acting as a tutor and mentor to small groups of artists working with hot glass. She has exhibited widely in the UK, The Netherlands, Germany and Ireland, and some of her work can be seen in the contemporary glass collections of the Ulster Museum, the Ernsting Stiftung in Dusseldorf, and the National Glass Museum in the Netherlands. Since returning to Ireland in 2004, Rice, in collaboration with the Leitrim Sculpture Centre, set up a hot glass studio. Based in her studio in Manorhamilton, Rice continues to make her own work and to teach workshops in hot and kiln-formed glass. She exhibited most recently in ‘Engaging with Glass’ in the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan, and is to exhibit in Spring 2012 at the Traver Gallery in Seattle, USA.
Past Residencies