Susie Wolff: Portrait of a Racing Driver, crystal glass

Palmer is an English artist who produces sculptural and installation artworks in glass and other materials. In recent works, the artist has utilized techniques from science and medicine, such as MRI scans to build a layered self portrait. 

Heart of Glass

I like the aesthetic that Palmer’s recent glass works take on -- these pieces seem to combine aesthetics from fine glass sculpture (like that produced by Dan Cummings) and from drawing. In pieces like Heart of Glass, thin panels of glass, each etched with a sort of contour drawing representing a scan, are placed in a row, forming layers and lending the whole piece a three-dimensional schematic look. 

The artist has also produced self portraits using the same technique, though the notion of “portrait” here is a bit unconventional. The artist draws on imagery from MRI scans of her own brain, etching the same contour line imagery into glass and creating an image of herself that is at once strangely intimate and scientifically distanced.

Brain of the artist, Angela Palmer, hand engraving on glass