CityMag talked to glassblower Liam Fleming about his journey as an artist and why it's so significant for Adelaide to host a Chihuly exhibition.

When Liam Fleming used to regularly visit the JamFactory while at university, he was described by the glass artist Tom Moore as “abnormally keen”.

It was around 2010, and Liam was studying at UniSA, where he took classes in glassblowing.

In fact, Liam’s fascination with this art form had been sowed from an early age.

“I think I’m rather lucky in the sense that I found glass from an early age and it just captivated me. I didn’t think about much else after that,” Liam tells CityMag.

Fast forward to 2024, and Liam now works as a technician at the JamFactory, with work in the Art Gallery of South Australia collection and plans to help revive the Eamonn Vereker glassblowing studio in Norwood.

Throughout his career, he has worked assisting artists like Danielle Rickaby and Jaan Poldaas at JamFactory and had a long-term residency at Queen Street Glass Studio.

Liam will also be showing his work as part of the Gathering Light group exhibition alongside fellow glass artists Nick Mount, Tim Edwards, Clare Belfrage, Jessica Murtagh and Kristel Britcher.

The installation will be displayed in the main gallery and gallery 2 at JamFactory from December in conjunction with Chihuly in the Botanic Garden.

CityMag recently chatted with Liam to hear about his journey as a glassblower and to get a sense of why it is such a big deal for Adelaide to host an exhibition by Dale Chihuly.

Liam Fleming, Transitory Form #30, 2024.

Liam describes the art he creates as simple mould-blown forms that he then deconstructs in a kiln.

He creates metal rectangular prism and square prism moulds, that he then blows into different shapes and sizes.

“I’d say my works are completely non-representational and I kind of aim for that. I want my art to be a response art, kind of like the modernist painters, like Frank Stella,” says Liam.

“There’s this beauty in not hiding or not trying to be anything else but itself and that’s kind of what I’m aiming for.”

While not the most satisfying glassblowing technique, Liam says this is the best method to achieve the desired look he is going for.

“Do I want to make it the best guitar solo I can think of, or do you pair it back and make a good-sounding chord? I guess that’s how I like to think about an analogy in how I make what I want,” he says.

For colour composition, Liam not only has to consider what looks good together, but how it might change in the kiln.

“In a personal way I’m trying to see what works and how they move together within the kiln, but that’s not necessarily what I want the object to be seen as, but it’s like a more personal joy in using colour and the different capacities that colour offers,” he says.

Glass artist Liam Fleming will help revive the Eamonn Vereker studio in Norwood.

Liam says he is currently exploring the idea of relinquishing control with his art.

“I don’t want to sound silly, but it’s like a coming-of-age, where you’re starting to realise all those things that you have control over and what you don’t and just accepting things for what they are,” he says.

“That’s coming from research into Stoic philosophy in that I’m setting myself up with these blown objects in perfect forms, setting these frameworks, but then at the last moment, I’m letting them decide for themselves how they shape, how they move.”

In terms of finding his voice as an artist, Liam says it took a lot of time and experimenting, with the display of his work Post-Production in the Ramsay Art Prize a highlight of his journey.

“It was a moment where I had these two objects – one was Post-Production and another that I have never exhibited and never will – where I was in my studio going, ‘Okay, which direction am I going in’, and I landed on the Post-Production piece,” he says.

“I feel like that was one of those fork-in-the-road moments and I’m really glad in that decision-making, that I went for that piece.

Among his influences, Liam counts ceramicists Ken Price and Ron Nagle, and of course, Dale Chihuly.

“Chihuly is such a giant name in the glassblowing world, one for these big public installation works,” says Liam.

“As a glassblower, looking at one of those pieces I think about the complexity, the time and the amount to go into one piece and then you see those 16 or so and you just go ‘yeah, right’, like it’s just such a monstrous, mammoth way of working.”

Liam says that apart from his jaw-dropping creations, Chihuly is also known as an educator.

“He did so much in terms of schooling and teaching. Like, there’s this school called Pilchuck Glass School, which is about an hour north of Seattle in the Pacific Northwest, and he set that up in the early 70s and it’s still running now,” he says.

“I’ve been there three times and it’s such a wonderful place to learn so much about and be completely immersed in glass. That’s that vision Chihuly had as well of education. So that’s the part I now take the strongest.”