About
Shannon Ellis Baker is a glass artist and maker born in Medway and residing in East Kent, England. She graduated from the University for the Creative Arts in 2022.
I am an emerging glass artist and designer from Medway residing in East Kent, England. I work predominantly in hot glass; I have fallen in love with the medium and am willing to prioritise furthering my technical education in glass over many other things. As a working class person, I am so passionate about arts accessibility and paving a way for others especially in the applied arts.
​
I am graduating from University of the Creative Arts in Farnham this summer and am predicted a 1st class BA in Glass.
Shannon is a member of the Contemporary Glass Society.
Recent Work
The culmination of my BA project has resulted in my final collection 'Love as a Homesickness' comprised of a blown glass goblet, cup and dish. The project is an attempt to physicalise the internal self into the external, into objects. The work considers notions of autobiography and personal life experiences as a young woman.
The glass has been made with and manipulated by bronze tools cast from my body, such as: my finger prosthetic tools, teeth tools and more abstractly, claw tools cast from the inner self. The bronze tools work as an extension of the self and are used in place of traditional glassmaking hot shop tools.
The collection is solely comprised of functional-ware this is due to a focus on the uncanny in domesticity and the everyday. Although uneasy, the objects are all fully functional. The work is a comment on the extreme burden of womanhood and its intrinsic link to ideas of the mother and motherhood, and unbefitting domesticity, often leading one to feel out of place; questioning sanity.
The full body nature of Shannon’s work, alongside the immersive process of glassblowing lends itself to the performative, Shannon explores this within her use of photography and video.
Text is at the core of her work, more often in the form of spoken word or poetry, often not a visual element but one behind the scenes as a driving force.
​