Glass Artist, Sculptor, Scenography
Æsa Bjørk Thorsteinsdóttir recieved her Masters degree in 1997 and Bachelor
of Arts degree with honours of the first class in 1995 from the glass department
of Edinburgh College of Art, Heriot-Watt University. In 1994 she studied at the
Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in the class of prof. Vladimir
Kopecky which strongly influenced her work. She has spent considerable time at
the Pilchuck Glass School, USA, as a student in 1997, 2001 and 2005 as an Emerging
Artist in Residence 1999 and a teaching assistant 2000. She was a teaching
assistant at the Corning Museum of Glass in 2005, and and an Artist in Residence
October 2006.
Æsa has exhibited her work in the UK, Norway, Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria,
Iceland and USA. She is based in Bergen where she manages S12 Gallery og Verksted
an open access studio and gallery space with specialized facilities for working
with cast and blown glass.
About her work, "Æsa Bjørk Thorsteinsdóttir works with big glass objects, which
she includes in larger installations. By combining glass objects with video
projections, she has previously demonstrated different ways of experiencing
time, from the short moment which perhaps only leaves a faint, frozen track
for posterity, to the experience of different states of being in human life.
Through a fascination with the eye as a kind of interface between internal and
external reality, she uses glass and the movements of the eye as a meeting place
for reflections on life and existence, on seeing and being seen. Through her
focus on the human body, she looks at the theme of both the brutal and the
vulnerable nature of transience." From the exhibition catalogue Transparent
Realisme by Anne Karin Jortveit.