Glass Metal Resin

My name is Elle and I am the sole entrepreneur behind Glass Metal Resin. I live and work in the Swan Valley near Perth, Western Australia with my husband, toddler and dog in our family home.

I came from a very creative family with my mum paying the bills with an income from singing and videography. She studied arts while my sister and I were in school, before completing her honours, masters and finally a diploma of education. She is now head of photomedia at one of Perths top schools. Her learning and art practice very much infiltrated my world and so from an early age I wanted to an artist/designer/photographer/jeweller/so many other things.

When I was 12 I went to Japan on exchange. While I was gone my sister was diagnosed with Leukaemia. It was only my Mum, sister and me in our little house so when I got home my world was completely different. During my studies I had learnt of an ancient Japanese legend which promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by the gods. So my 12 year old self thought it would be a good idea to get everyone in the school to get together and make my sister 1000 paper cranes (I'm not sure how I convinced them all) but they were everywhere….

Obviously it worked because my sister got better and now she is an inspired, well travelled, fiery, red headed nurse.

Ever since, when I have spare paper and a quiet moment I fold cranes.

In Early to 2014 my mum offered to give me her lead lighting equipment as she no longer wanted it. She gave me everything, glass, soldering iron, glass cutting tools etc. She had taught me how to do flat panel, copper foiling and glass work when I was younger and so I jumped at the opportunity. I picked up the art bug in force and started to pursue my passion to create. I took up resin shortly after glasswork. I just started researching and found suppliers and videos which lead to experimenting everyday after work and on the weekends and thinking about it at work…I have been called tenacious….I was obsessed…. 😛

It all was going so strong that mum soon mentioned a local market that she thought I could sell my work at and Glass Metal resin was born.

When I started working with glass I didn’t want to make flat panels. I felt inspired to use it in a way that excited me, so I started making sculptures. One of my first sculptures and huge achievements was to make the paper crane of my childhood, out of glass. I spent weeks on the design, refining the process, I have so many pages of drawings and came up with the sculpture pictured here.

My logo/signature is an evolved version of the crane holding a light bulb balloon . It symbolises hope, joy, geometry, nature, light and big thinking which is what GMR and my art practice is all about. I studied in three different degrees (art, photomedia, engineering) over three years without ever completing a degree and I used to be embarrassed of that but now I can see how much what I learnt has helped to form who I am as an artist. You can see that in my logo.

I had been playing with putting plants in resin for some time before having my son in 2016 with limited success(I have been told that I have very high standards). I couldn't find anyone who was doing what I wanted to do, no articles, videos or general info either so I started experimenting. By the time Henry was born and I was ready to get back to creating my artwork had evolved in such a way that my plant preservation and technique was very close to where I want it to be. I will probably never stop experimenting and trying to get better. I am fuelled by the chance to learn how to do things differently and better but the knowledge that I have gained has allowed me to start accepting commissioned work while continuing to create work that inspires me.