Although much of my research has been focused on ideas and concepts, I have quietly been exploring visual and sculptural ideas alongside the intellectual ones. 

So much material has been buzzing around my mind about how I might start to visually interpret and express the concepts and relationships I have been learning about. In the end i have learned that i need to ‘follow my nose’ or ‘go where the energy is’. So i have been following up the ideas that have most grabbed my attention. My frustration is that, with glass in particular, exploring a single idea can take weeks and weeks, and there are so many ideas that the visual and creative research will extend long after the residency period is over.

As I have been progressing through the concepts and ideas and conversations and learning, I know several of the things I want to explore include:

• Things with wings
• Angiogenesis – healthy, cancerous or not at all
• Mosaic cells and mosaic maps
• Light as a metaphor for oxygen availability and/or for chemical signalling
• Barcoding and location tracking – mirroring the spatial labelling of cells
• Stitching and golden threads (literal or not)

And this is just a starting point! I have gradually been developing a creative ‘mind map’ over the last few weeks which I will share here soon, which shows many of the directions I want to experiment with. In any case I will be posting about some of my journeys so far over the next week or two…