About

Teresa Chlapowski

My work can also be seen both on line and in person at  Aubergine Arts Gallery,  Mardleybury Gallery and  Parndon Mill Gallery, and online only at  BOHA GLASS

Follow me on Instagram and Facebook

Links to my photography portfolios: flickr

Teresa is a mixed media artist, creating both sculptural and functional glass work, as well as photography based digital art and now experimenting with Cyanotype prints (inspired by her glass).

Having been a knitwear designer for many decades, the desire to create her own view of the world proved irresistible. Starting with ceramics and sculpture courses, Teresa soon discovered glass and fell in love with this amazing, alchemic medium – an alternative universe of light and shadows, yet still so very solid.

Her fused glass panels and vessels express her earlier textile background, made by using one off slumping moulds which have a fabric, flowing quality.  Teresa’s more recent work continues to be imbued with a riot of colour and light, creating intricate patterns that burst out into a kaleidoscope of reflections and textures.

In her more figurative sculptural work, she 'paints’ a glimpse of the human form that is simultaneously mysterious and revealing, but always with a story to tell, or moments trapped in time, which engage the viewer to make their own.  Her work is often layered using many pieces or 'pourings’ of glass to give a sense of depth and which seem to open a secret door into another, more spiritual imagined world, this is especially true in her sand cast glass sculptures.  These ideas continue into her digital art images.

Photography acts as an inspiration, a way of note taking.  Catching a moment of sunlight casting shadows, a walk by the sea with clouds reflected in puddles in the textured ridges of sand, an ancient sand covered archaeological dig in rocky pitted cliffs, a piece of colourful folkloric textile or a woodland lined with dense autumnal undergrowth – all these detailed patterns found in the everyday world around us provide ample inspiration for her creativity.

Teresa uses a variety of techniques including fusing and sand casting glass, as well as combining glass with ceramics, photography and painting.  She works from her studio in Harrow.

Favourite quotes:

„The most beautiful bodies are like transparent glass. The most powerful flames like water washing the tired feet of travellers”  Czesław Miłosz (poet)

„Looking back doesn’t do any good.  Look forward and make that as beautiful as you can”  Ruth Slenczynska (pianist)

 „There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”  Leonard Cohen (singer, song writer)

MEMBER OF: The Contemporary Glass Society (CGS), The Chelsea Art Society (CAS), The Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain (APA),  Just Glass Society,  Glass Art Society (GAS), Herts Visual Arts (HVA)

Teresa exhibits widely with the societies of which she is a member, as well as having had her work selected by the Society of Women Artists (SWA), Royal Society of Marine Artists (RMSA) and Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers (RMS) and shown at the Mall Galleries.  Her work is in private collections in Japan, Poland, France and the US.

FEATURED IN PUBLICATIONS:

  • Glass Art Magazine (2023)
  • Just Glass: Brought to Light (2022)
  • God Is..(2021)
  • Church Times (2020)
  • Where is God in Our 21st Century World (2018)
  • The Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain Review (2014),

Education and Professional Work

2023 Winner of the Slaski Sculpture Prize at the Chelsea Art Society annual exhibition

2023 QAF finalist runner up in 3D

2016-2022 served on the council of the Chelsea Art Society

2018 & 2021 Twice finalist at the Oxo Gallery, London, with Chaiya Awards

2016 3rd place in the Suwa-Garusano-Sato for best innovative glass work and her work was exhibited in Japan

2009 Sculptors’ Own Prize at the Chelsea Arts Society exhibition

1986-2008 Set up her own fashion design company, designing and importing knitwear collections from the Far East.

1977 Diploma (HON) in Fashion Design, London College of Fashion.

 

Courses

Teresa has taken part in glass master classes with Max Jacquard and Colin Reid, as well as glass, sculpture and ceramic courses at the University of Hertfordshire over many years.

She has sand cast glass at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham and now sand casts with Jon Lewis and Ewa Warzyniak at Parndon Mill, Harlow