Don’t try this at home

Glassmakers NICKY BURNS and BRODIE NAIRN have made their home in a windswept corner of Caithness. John Burns talks to them about their fascination with glass and their globe-trotting lifestyle.

I AM STANDING in the lounge of Brodie and Nicky’s Lybster home, perched precariously on the cliff top. Below us the North Sea nibbles away at Caithness. When I met Brodie he was impeccably dressed in a smart business suit and that confused me. Artists don’t wear suits. I have my writer’s radar turned up full but somehow I just can’t focus on him.

Slowly a picture begins to appear as they talk about travelling the world in pursuit of their passion for glass. “I learnt how to make this finish in Italy,” Brodie explains, holding what looks like a matt black egg. “After leaving art college in Edinburgh I spent two years at The International Glass Centre at Brierly Hill where I studied the technical side of glass making. When we graduated Nicky and I decided to contact the people we most admired as glass-makers and go and work for them.”

Nicky and Brodie came to the tiny fishing village of Lybster, when Brodie was employed to manage the refurbishment of North Lands Creative Glass. The centre had been established for over five years and was set up to allow glassmakers and other artists to explore the potential of glass as a medium. North Lands now has a worldwide reputation as a centre of excellence.

The couple’s first meeting, at art college in Edinburgh, didn’t get off to the best of starts, “I asked Brodie for a light for my cigarette,” Nicky relates, “the next thing I knew he was beating me about the head, then he left. I didn’t know what was going on. When people started complaining about a burning smell I realised my hair had been on fire and it started to come away in chunks. Brodie and I sort of got to know each other from then on.”

That was ten years ago and Brodie and Nicky have been together ever since, only separated at times when their work has taken them to different places. Nicky wears her hair short now, a wise precaution with Brodie around.

As Brodie begins talking about his work I can see that he has a powerful commitment to his art and to a search for excellence. “There are no happy accidents,” Brodie tells me, “When I start a piece I know exactly what the end product is going to look like, from the initial drawing to the final piece.” Glass is one of the most complex mediums for any artist to work with. The high temperatures involved and the fluidity of the glass mean that all glass making is pressured by time. You can only work with the glass when it is hot, and even then, gravity is against you, pulling the glass earthwards and deforming its shape.

One of the biggest influences on Nicky’s work has been the time she spent in Holland working with, American glass artist Tootz Zynsky. Tootz is one of the top ten glass artists in the world, her work is comprised of fine strands of glass fused together to make shapes that look as though they were grown more than made. Her unique style has made her world famous and Nicky learnt a great deal about glass making and also the business side of being an artist from her time with Tootz.

“One thing I learnt,” Nicky explained, “is just how important it is to understand that being an artist is as much about managing the business side of what you do as it is about being creative. You have to know how to insure your work, how to deal with big galleries and how best it can be marketed. As well as that side of things glass making, because it is so complex, needs to be well organised. Materials bought in, furnaces maintained.”

Nicky revealed that glass making is a collaborative process; a glassmaker needs his helpers, like a sorcerer needs his apprentices. “Making glass is like a complex dance with the glass at its centre,” Nicky revealed. ”Glass is heavy, hot and if you don’t know how to handle it, glass can be dangerous. Glass artists work as a team. Sometimes you need shielding from the heat or help with a particular tool. If you have a good team, say three of us who work well together, they often don’t say much they just know instinctively what to do.”

Nicky and Brodie’s pieces of glass sculpture are as different as their makers. Brodie’s glass creations are marked by their precision and accuracy. He shapes glass into three-dimensional ellipses, sliced by clean, sharp lines, as exact as if a laser had cut them. The cuts reveal an internal complexity to his work that challenges perception. Nicky’s work is softer, much more organic, the pieces are reminiscent of fungi and leaves, their colours come from the earth, trees and the sky.

Nicky and Brodie are already making plans to travel the glass world once more. Brodie has been offered a residency in the south of England but the couple plan to retain a base in Scotland if they can. They eventually want to establish glass-making studio of their own but are undecided as to whether they will remain in Caithness. For glassmakers there are problems associated with living somewhere that is relatively remote, as Brodie explains.

“Transport would be a major problem for us if we set up here. The raw materials for glass making are heavy and expensive to transport. The finished products are fragile and also difficult to move around safely. Insurance can be a big problem if you are shipping an expensive piece long distances. Often they are impossible to insure and you can end up sending someone on a plane with a piece of glass sculpture sitting on their lap.  Sometimes it’s the only way.

That Nicky and Brodie are both captivated by the mysteries of glass comes across very strongly when you talk to the couple, “There is something magical about glass,” said Nicky, “it’s brittle and fluid at the same time. A piece changes with the light and I think it’s strange the way you can look into glass and see different shapes and colours, there’s something magical about glass that’s hard to define.”

“I doubt if any other medium is so technically demanding, you really have to have a lot of knowledge about the different temperatures that effect different colours of glass. You even have to understand the chemical composition of glass before you can work with it properly.”

Artists like Nicky Burns and Brodie Nairn make an important contribution to the artistic life of the Highlands and it will be our loss if they move away. Hopefully Nicky and Brodie will find a way round their transport difficulties and keep on scattering light here for a long time to come.

If you would like to see Nicky and Brodie’s work you can visit Brown’s Gallery, Castle Brae, Tain, where Nicky’s work is on display. Brodie’s work is available to view at the Kilmorack Gallery, Kiltarlity, near Beauly. Just be careful that you too don’t fall under the spell of glass.