Helen Slater Stokes

Helen Slater Stokes is a Glass Artist and Lecturer. Slater Stokes graduated from The Royal College of Art, with a master’s degree in 3D Design: Glass & Ceramics, and since then has been lecturing and making glass sculpture from her workshop in the Cotswolds.

Helen Slater Stokes, Future Heritage 2019 Alumni

Her artwork draws inspiration from the landscape and its perception within changing environments. How specific places and environments are remembered and perceived, within and throughout our lives, holds a particular significance for Slater Stokes. She investigates how memory-based landscapes capture and stop time, preserving depictions of virtual worlds within glass.

Slater Stokes’ work explores the creation of the 3D or spatial image and the notion of glass as a facilitator, in working with and challenging our perception of ‘space’ and ‘place’. Within her making process these elements are digitally rendered in three dimensions and then interlaced to match with kiln cast glass lenses.

The glassmaking techniques used are founded in the tradition of studio-based kiln formed glass, with techniques ranging from lost wax casting, slumping and fusing glass, alongside the glass carving and finishing processes of sandblasting, engraving, cutting, grinding, machine and hand lapping, and finally polishing.

'Acuity' By Helen Slater Stokes

At Future Heritage

For Future Heritage Slater Stokes made works which illustrated her love of landscapes and interest in optical perception. Firstly, small round cast glass forms encapsulating worlds through virtual landscapes, other worldly and captivating. Larger works alluded to wider expanses of space and depth, views across fields, through the soft focus of peripheral elements.

Notably, Slater Stokes produced her largest wall installation of lenticular glass works to date. Built upon her PhD research into spatial perception, they were animated as the viewer moved past, suggesting abstract forms which recede into and protrude out from the glasses surface.

“Practically [Future Heritage] afforded me a platform and space to challenge myself by working on an installation which was larger than anything I had ever made before. During the show I spoke to lots of really interesting companies and designers, who allowed me to see other possibilities and applications for my work, creating a dialogue that has really opened up my practice going forward.” - Helen Slater Stokes

Current Work

Slater Stokes is currently working on new lenticular artworks which will expand the concepts and challenge the practical techniques of her practice.

Since Decorex her work has been selected to feature in two important reviews of international glass and craft. Her work was selected as 1 of 100 international glass pieces to feature in The Corning Museum of Glass annual 'New Glass Review 41', for which over 2,599 works were submitted by 978 artists from 54 countries. Another of her new pieces has been selected to be exhibited in Japan, as part of the International Kogei Award in Toyama. This award is aimed to honour craftspeople from a range of disciplines who reflect new global trends and innovation in their practice.

The lenticular piece, entitled ‘Acuity’ was purchased for the main collection at The Imagine Museum of Glass, Florida USA.

'Field View' by Helen Slater Stokes

To find out more about Helen Slater Stokes visit her website

If you would like to make an enquiry about commissions, get in touch here.