Ben Edols began working in glass in 1987. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Sydney College of the Arts before completing a postgraduate diploma at the Canberra School of Art in 1992. His practice has taken him abroad to collaborate with fellow artists and makers in the United States, Italy, and Japan. He has also taught glassblowing workshops at major institutions including Pilchuck Glass School, The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, the Toyama Institute of Glass Art, Niijima Glass Centre, The Jam Factory, and Sydney College of the Arts.
Kathy Elliott has worked with glass since 1988 and received her BA from the Canberra School of Art in 1992. Her particular expertise is in cold-working processes, including the cutting, carving, and finishing of glass. She has led workshops at The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, Pilchuck Glass School, the Toyama Institute of Glass Art, the University of South Australia at Underdale, and the Canberra School of Art.
Edols and Elliott began their collaborative practice in 1993, debuting their first joint exhibition at de Vera in San Francisco. The exhibition followed a two-year period during which they travelled throughout the United States, working in a range of glass studios. In 2001, they established their own purpose-built studio for hot-glass and cold-working processes, which remains the center of their practice. Their work draws deeply on the structures, rhythms, and visual language of the natural world—especially botanical growth, leaves, grasses, and cellular forms. Glass’s capacity to transmit and diffuse light is central to their approach, allowing color, texture, and internal pattern to shift with changing illumination. Their objects often suggest the sensation of light moving through the moisture-filled tissues of plants. As Elliott has explained, their aim has been to continually expand the possibilities of both blowing and carving: “We wanted to create sculptural forms with a beautiful tension and sense of rhythm, while at the same time exploiting the wonderful qualities of the glass, especially its ability to display color and texture through light.”
Over several decades, Edols and Elliott have become one of Australia’s most recognized artistic partnerships. Their vividly colored, highly sculptural glass has attracted international attention and has been exhibited in Australia, Japan, the United States, Germany, England, and Italy.