Robinson consumed by glass A critical part of the glass caster's art is "annealing", slowly bringing down the temperature of the kiln so the glass cools from liquid at a steady and even rate without cracking.

Talking to glassmaker Ann Robinson in her Glendene studio in an industrial area on the banks of the Whau River, the opposite process seems to be going on - a slow warming up as she tries to talk about anything but her work.

"I find it really difficult being interviewed because I haven't got a hell of a lot to say," she says, after articulating clearly the thinking that drives her to make increasingly larger and more challenging objects.

"It's the exploration of a material, where it is at and it probably comes from my heart at some point but it's not hugely rationalised.

"It's more that you think about it as you are doing it and wonder what you are up to and what it means and why you might have chosen that.

"It's sort of an internal dialogue that's going on, but I don't think for a second that anyone else would be interested in that dialogue, can't imagine it, so I am just being true to my own sense of how I think this material could be expressed and the sorts of things I want to do with it."

More at NZ Herald November 15  ¶ 11:05 pm