The puzzle of glassmaking
- Rike creates large dynamic glass arrangements
- For her, good work should enchant the observer
- She feels glassmaking stimulates all the senses
Rike Scholle still remembers the moment her passion for glasswork was sparked. “It was in 1997 when visiting a Dale Chihuly exhibition at the Suntory Museum in Tokyo,” she says. References to the work of the famous American glass sculptor can still be detected in her work, however Rike has developed her very own unique expression. “I am constantly coming up with new shapes and trying to find new ways of incorporating them into my work,” she says. By assembling individual parts she creates a final object that is "like a 3D puzzle in my head”. However, it is not only the aesthetic quality that distinguishes her work but her ability to work at the furnace without support, so-called 'solo-blowing'.
INTERVIEW
Mainly I learned from my instructors, very experienced glassmakers, at the vocational school for glassmaking in Zwiesel. And then during my time as a 'work-study' employee at Urban Glass in Brooklyn and in a variety of glassmaking courses in the US and Germany.
It is a full body sensual experience during the creative process. There's the heat and the humming sound of the glass furnace, the sounds and smells in the workshop, and the visual experience of witnessing hot glass changing its from liquid to rigid.
When a work enchants and captivates me without me knowing why or needing to know. The process of creation is a very powerful miracle to me.
No. What I have learned technically is the foundation for my work, but there is always a knowledge frontier. I am continually striving to find my own techniques and new ways to transform my ideas into reality.
Rike Scholle
Glassblower
Osterhofen, Germany
Recommended by Zentralverband des Deutschen Handwerks
AVAILABILITY
By appointment only
PHONE
+49 9932402720
LANGUAGES
German, English, Spanish
