As a child, Julia developed a great enthusiasm for painting as it was something which, in a similar fashion to the likes of other artists such as Mandeep, enabled her to convey her emotions. As she says: ‘Art was the biggest passion I had and it was the strongest tool I had to express myself’. Painting as a tool by which Julia used to communicate her feelings however, soon morphed into that of a syringe that she would use to inject artistic life into an entirely different, much more tangible, medium. For it was through the use of paint that transformed glass for Julia, as it has for thousands of others over the course of history, from just being something we use to keep the heat out into an art form.
Like many creators, Julia came from a pretty artsy background and from childhood her family would encourage her to draw and paint. Then, when she was 15, her mother invited her along to the glassmaking glasses which she had begun to attend. But whilst this did open her eyes to the world of glass, it still hadn’t quite swayed the young Julia into thinking it was an entirely creative medium. So, when it came to going to university, she decided to continue to follow her passion for what she believed to be the true arts by studying Painting and Art History in OCAD - the largest art and design University in Canada.
It’s perhaps fair to say that the majority of us humans around today see glassmaking as a purely utilitarian practice, whether it be putting together a window for us to see out of or formulating a cup for us to drink from. Yet, in a somewhat of a chicken or the egg conundrum, glassmaking was an art form long before it became a practical one. Interestingly, glass was first used by humans during the Stone Age as a sharp object to attach to the ends of our spears but since the glass we used was naturally occurring obsidian, there was actually no ‘glassmaking’ involved. It was only when someone came along around 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and realised that soda, lime and silica could be used to create glass (a combination which is still used today to produce ‘flat glass’ that is used to construct most of our glass windows) that glassmaking became a thing. But what these first glassmakers made wasn’t something practical at all, but decorative.
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