Last Tuesday, March 9th, Ione Thorkelsson, glass artist, received the Saidye-Bronfman Award, in Montréal.

Ione Thorkelsson's glass creations are at once fossils from a lost epoch and mutants from a futuristic dystopia. Her sculptures emerge from the fiery kiln as flash-frozen creatures of the imagination. A pioneer in glass in Manitoba, she built her own studio over 35 years ago and has taught herself her signature cast glass technique. She lives on a prairie escarpment on edge of glacial Lake Agassiz.

The ancient memory of the land recasts the everyday discoveries outside her door – wings, sculls, spines and roots – into objects of inspiration.