Married to the Sea

Dreya Bennett is a fused glass artist based in Newquay, Cornwall. She was born in Nigeria and moved to Cornwall aged nine. Having always loved being in the water Dreya has been a keen surfer from a very young age and later found her love for kite surfing. After retiring from the sport Dreya channelled her love of the sea into glass work and has now found her new passion.

Has the sea always been a big part of your life?

So when I’ve been in a busy town like London the first thing I have to do when I get back is to rest my eyes by staring out at the horizon and being able to see as far as you can see with nothing in it and it’s very stress revealing. It’s a very lovely thing that we can do in Cornwall. As were constantly able to see the horizon's wild space to play in. So we were always in the water, even after school we would go the club that had a swimming pool that was always warm which helped.

When we came back to the UK from Africa we moved to Cornwall. The coastlines here in Cornwall are just amazing. The sea has it’s moods and the smell of it just affects everything in your life. There’s something so calming about looking out at the horizon. When I’ve been in a busy town like London the first thing I have to do when I get back is to rest my eyes by staring out at the horizon, being able to see as far as you can see with nothing in it and it’s very stress revealing. It’s a very lovely thing that we can do in Cornwall as were constantly able to see the horizon.

The sea has affected my work in so many ways. You walk on the beach and the shadows and light is just fantastic. The sea here can look like a thousand diamonds with the sun reflecting on it, it’s like a million diamonds twinkling back at you. It changes every single day and it never fails to inspire me. The most beautiful thing about living close to the sea is that there’s nothing better than walking by it or being in it or even hearing it and smelling it.

How did you get into glass?

I got into glass when I was in Falmouth University. My landlady was doing a stain glass window in her loft and I liked the look of it so I decided and went to evening classes. After finishing my foundation. I decided to go to Swansea University to study architectural stain glass and I was instantly hooked.

Was it hard to get into glass?

It was hard to find something that was marketable. Finding something that I liked to make and put my name on was a hard balance. So I did lots of experiments and tested lots of things and in the end it was a friend that asked me to make him something for his wife for Christmas and I didn’t have anything so I said how about I make you some waves? I experimented and did some drawings and put some samples in the kiln and I came up with these waves. So I made him three waves to choose from and he brought all three. After Christmas I decided to put them on Facebook and the response was massive. So I thought I would follow this theme and it was a strike of luck really. A flash of inspiration which has led to all sort of things and now I’m making waves from 95 cm squares. I’ve just made a new piece that has just been sent over to the Cayman Island.

Do you wish you started glass sooner?

I had wanted to get back to my glass for a long time when I finished kite surfing and I did a few various jobs and had a few businesses on a beach. Which sounds lovely and it was, but I basically had no summer it was seven days a week for six to seven months a year and then it was winter. I started glass full time when I was forty-five and actually for me it was the right time. It was like everything came together we had just built the house and we had the studios. I was committed enough and I knew what to do business wise, from running businesses eight years previously. So I think as much as I would’ve liked to done it earlier I actually think this was probably the right time for me to go back to glass full time.

How do you make your signature glass waves?

I start of with a clear glass piece, which in a sense to me, is what water is, it’s clear. Then I add the colours through the frits, which are various grades of crushed glass. So I go from a powder up to some quite big chunks and I also use enamels and copper oxides and bubble powders to create these effects. Some of the frits are opaque and some are transparent so all these different effects get put onto the waves and they create all these colours. All of them are constantly different because either my mood changes or the weather outside affects the colours I pick. I then cut about a hundred strips of glass that are then placed on top and then add more colours to the glass. All my pieces are hand cut and hand placed so no pieces are ever the same as the process is impossible to repeat identically.

How would you describe your style?

I guess my style is quite organic, I’m quite impulsive and I get excited by things quite easily and I’m quite impatient so I think it’s a little bit reflective in my style and maybe the theme of water helps because it is very random and it’s not organised and not structured and that’s me. The way that I work isn’t like that either so I like to go with the flow, it’s water and I flow with it.

What’s next for your glass work?

Where do I start? There’s so much I want to do! I would like to do garden sculptures and public commissions. I guess the next one on my list is I’m hoping to have an exhibition this year and hoping to look at more formed glass and more caster glass and looking at the sea beds and casting some really nice objects which will then be displayed. I’m really looking forward to developing and experimenting with new things in the upcoming years. I still want to follow the sea and the colours that are my passion but I want to create more cast work. I have just won a grant with cultivator that has enabled me to buy a 3D printer so I will be moulding, via a computer programme, these organic sea urchins and then printing them on the 3D printer and then the moulds will be used as casts in order to create these 3D pictures. If I can manage to get what’s in my head created in glass, I will be extremely happy and I know it’s going to be a very exciting but a very long process.

You can check out more of Dreya's work over on her website or pop over to her Instagram and Facebook.