works
bio
works
bio
Born in Canada, Michèle Oberdieck lives and works in London. She studied textile design at Glasgow School of Art, subsequently running a successful printed textile practice based at the Oxo Tower in London. In 2016, she switched directions and received her MA from the Royal College of Art in Ceramic and Glass.
During Oberdieck’s textile practice, a significant commission involving the development of a new technique of fusing printed fabrics between sheets of glass, led to her artistic shift in material. It was a moment that sparked curiosity in this new medium, paving the way for a new creative direction.
Plant life has always been a stimulus for her, which is reflected in her screen printed work. Her background in hand printing and dyeing silks influenced her colour sense with inspiration sourced from the natural world and abstract expressionist paintings.
Oberdieck’s work is exhibited The Salon Art + Design, New York, and Collect Art Fair, London.
Her sculptural vessels were selected for the European Prize for Applied Art Exhibition 2022 in Belgium, the Ireland Glass Biennale 2019, and the Venice Glass Week three years in a row. In March 2023, she was selected to exhibit at the Crafts Council’s Collect Open at Somerset House in London. In the same year, Oberdieck was awarded the QEST (Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust) grant, allowing her to train at the Corning Museum of Glass and Bildewirk, Fraunau, Germany.
Fantasy Plants: “My series of botanical imagined glass plants are intended to question the effects of climate change and cross pollination. Visiting the Herbarium in Kew Gardens and looking at extinct and endangered species as well as various plant science research centres, I have created a series of abstracted plant forms blown from hot glass. Beginning as gestural sketches idealizing what plants might need to survive in the future, each process has edited down details which are blown into glass components and applied hot to a glass core. The botanical forms start taking on animated qualities resembling insects and birds, possibly improving their chances of survival”.