Joanna Manousis

Foreword by Charles R. Hajdamach

Joanna Manousis is one of those rare individuals who comes to an unknown discipline and quickly stamps her individuality on it. Having started her university training in fine art painting she transferred to the Glass Department at Wolverhampton University where her artistic talents blossomed and she came away from there with a first class honours degree, no mean feat at one of the most rigorous glass courses in the world.

In 2007 she also entered her piece called ‘Lace’, an installation canopy of glass lace made out of fused Venetian cane, for the Pearson Glass Awards and won the student category for Best Newcomer. The piece was also shortlisted for the Bombay Sapphire Prize, and was included in their touring exhibition throughout Europe. Currently she is working towards her Masters degree in glass at Alfred University in New York State.

Her glass in the final degree show at Wolverhampton was impressive, witty and technically brilliant. Alongside her winning entry of the fused murrine ‘Lace’ panel were pieces which used neon lighting, kiln casting and hand painted enamel decoration.

The ‘Housewife Cameo Series’ was a humorous view of the stereotypes of the domestic housewife in 1950s magazines with a more serious underlying comment about the current fashion for retro kitsch and nostalgia for that period. The two domestic cleaning bottles called ‘'Self Contained Spray' s’ took the ‘housewife in the home’ idea a stage further with a technical tour-de-force of blown glass decorated internally with graal enamel paints and kiln cast stoppers and sprays. 

At 24 and the youngest artist in the Bruntnell-Astley Contemporary Glass Gallery Joanna has a mature mastery of glassmaking techniques and a refreshing happiness and sense of fun in the choice of her subject matter. The forecast for her future work is of dazzling things.

Charles R. Hajdamach