“When she does come up with new ideas, it’s always mind-
blowing and inspirational. I know she is only scratching the
surface of her potential.”
She describes her work as very organic, rooted from
nature. “With glass, there’s only a certain point that you can
force glass to do certain things. The way I treat it is that we
are working together. I am not working the glass; the glass is
working with me. The glass
tells me what’s the next step
half the time. It’s such a cool
material to work with.”
Mariel captures ocean
movement in her medium, as
seen in her popular wave
bowls. “I use no moulds. All
free-form, all hand-done. By
me just tooling the glass,
rather than putting it in a
mould, I am letting the glass
continue doing what it’s
doing. Glass when it’s hot —
it’s moving. I try and capture
that, the hot look of it.” It
takes a team of three people
to make her larger bowls.
Matt Crossman, a flame
worker who specializes in making glass pipes for the
cannabis industry, is an assistant at the studio. “It’s a dance,”
he says of the teamwork needed to make a large wave bowl.
Matt greatly appreciates working with Mariel, who expects
perfection. “She is critical, in a good way. Helps me to
become a better artist.”
Mariel looks to nature in North America as well as marine
life for some of her ideas. One of her extensive pieces, what
she calls a wall mounting, is made up of “hundreds of pods
that climb across the wall like lichen on a tree,” she says.
“Pretty much every wall mounting I have created I have
sold. It’s made up of several components, from small, an
inch wide, to 12 inches wide,” explains Mariel. “Each ball
has a little piece of coral that I sculpted. Every single one is
hand-sculpted.” Her first wall mounting found inspiration
from her pregnancy with Bella. “The idea of having a bowl
holding the coral was totally from holding the baby.” Mariel
took advantage of money she received when she won the
Nan Yeomans Grant for Artistic Development to have the
freedom to develop such a new creation.
One enthusiastic collector of Mariel’s art is Elizabeth
Moore, who lives and works in Kingston. “I think it’s
absolutely amazing that here in Kingston, you can have an
artist of that calibre. You don’t have to go to Toronto or other
countries to have such exquisite pieces,” says Elizabeth. “I
continue to get enjoyment and peace and comfort from them.”
“You can find our work all over the world,” says Mariel.
“Australia, Lebanon, Germany. Our biggest client is the
Corning Museum of Glass in New York. We sell in the States
a lot — from our little Kingston.” Mariel and Alexi are also
represented in galleries throughout Ontario, including the
Oeno Gallery in Picton, which carries Mariel’s wave bowls.
Mariel knew from a young age that she would be in the
arts, even if she understood it would be a difficult life. “But
if I can make a living at it and be comfortable, I’ll be happy.
And that’s what I’m doing.”
PROFILE KINGSTON 31