BLOWN AWAY

Swedish artist Fredrik Nielsen breathes new life into glass

- HARRIET LLOYD-SMITH

The path to craft can vary. Sometimes it's inherited over generations; sometimes it's ignited by a chance encounter with a master craftsperson. For artist Fredrik Nielsen, it was sparked by the 1985 Swedish coming-of-age film My Life as a Dog.

It follows Ingemar, the troubled young protagonist, who is sent away from his dying mother to live with his aunt and uncle in Småland province, home to Glasriket ('the Kingdom of Crystal'), Sweden's glass-making capital. 'It's a really cute movie,' says Nielsen.' Life is very simple; the guys are working in the hot shop, the wives are packing the glass. This little boy's mother is sick, then passes away, so he comes down to this glass kingdom, where the fire is warm and secure. That film made me think about glass.

But unlike the centuries-old Orrefors and Kosta Boda glassworks in Glasriket, Nielsen is in the business of subversion: to turn an ancient craft into something defiantly contemporary. Born in Linköping, Sweden, in 1977, he was first drawn to study glass when his mother brought home an amphora vase. He recalls, 'It wasn't fine art. It was cast porcelain, but it was super yellow [on the outside] and white inside, and it had a volume of half your upper body. I was maybe 13 or 14 when you're not so interested in amphora vases, but it talked to me. That volume!'

In 1998, Nielsen began training at the Orrefors Glass School, later attending the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, and returning to study at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. In the quarter-century since, he has pushed the art of glass to its outermost extremities.