Made by hand. Made to keep. Chosen by glass. July 6, 2026 16:42 1 Comment

You Don't Choose to Work with Glass. Glass Chooses You.

People ask me sometimes how I ended up here — making things from glass, under the mighty maunga, Ruapehu.

Cutting glass, carving wax, firing kilns instead of running projects. It's a fair question. Nothing about my old career suggested this was coming.

For years, I worked in corporate change management. My days were spreadsheets, stakeholders, deadlines and the particular kind of exhaustion that comes from helping other people navigate transitions, while quietly wondering what my own looked like. If you had told me then that I would be giving it all away to work with my hands, at my craft, I would have laughed.

Glass found me by accident. A short one day class, meant to be nothing more than a weekend distraction for me and my friend Kerry, turned into something I couldn't put down. It was something that sparked that moment every artist knows — an almost unnatural pull. The first time you open a kiln and see what the heat has done. The first time it works like it's supposed to. Even the times it doesn't – you coming back for more. It's part chemistry, part faith, part surrender. You can plan a piece meticulously, have made it the same way ten other times, and still, the results aren't guaranteed. After years of trying to plan and direct outcomes for a living, that unpredictability didn't frustrate me. It undid something. In the best way.

That's really the heart of it. Change management taught me how to manage transformation in organisations. Glass taught me how to sit inside transformation myself — the actual, physical, molecular kind. Sand and minerals, transformed by fire, cooled into something entirely new. It's not a bad metaphor for a career change, if you're looking for one. I wasn't, at the time. I was just looking for a Saturday morning that didn't involve email.

I didn't leave my old career in one dramatic exit. It was slower and messier than that — a couple of years of doing both, of testing whether this was a hobby or something more, of firing pieces late into the night after a full day of meetings. 2am bedtimes became commonplace. Eventually the balance tipped. The studio became all consuming - the thing I enjoyed; and 'work', well, it stopped being the thing that funded the studio. Instead it became the thing which got in the way.

People sometimes assume a project management background and an art practice sit at odds with each other. I've found the opposite. Every kiln firing is a project — a schedule, a set of variables, a plan for how things should go and a plan B for when they don't. What's changed isn't the discipline. It's what I'm building, and why.

I set up my studio here in Ohakune, in the shadow of the mighty maunga Ruapehu, because this is now our home. We bought a small patch of land here back in 2005 when the kids were little and skiing was their all-consuming passion. The kids have moved on but we stayed – we love it here and every day feel more and more grounded. It's a perfect place for me to work - the landscape, the light, the bush – I find peace and inspiration here. There's a rawness to this place — the weather, the light, the way the mountain changes mood by the hour — that finds its way into the glass. Some pieces are calm and considered. Others come out of the kiln looking like they fought their way there. (They probably did!)

I still don't think I chose this, not really. I think glass chose me, the way it seems to choose a lot of us who end up doing this for a living. You don't set out to become a glass artist. You get introduced to it, start to discover the different ways you can use glass to express your voice, your vision, your soul. Piece by piece, firing by firing, until one day you look up and realise you've built a whole life around something that started as a distraction.

If you're in the middle of your own version of this — wondering whether the thing you love doing on the side might be trying to tell you something — I'd say pay attention. Mine took years to listen to properly. I'm glad I did eventually.

Made by hand. Made to keep. Chosen by glass.