Chris De Bock
“I use glass because of its beauty. It signifies for me purity and transparency. The reflection of light plays an important role in my work. The purity of the glass enables me to focus on the polarity of the beauty of the material and the ugliness of pollution. It is my way to tell something about environmental issues.”
The theme of her graduation work is biodiversity, global warming, pollution, the disappearance of nature and environmental disasters. She is since years interested in this theme and tries to translate them in glass. She uses the material glass to visualize rubbish dumps, the deterioration of the landscape, the struggle for survival of animals, as in her series ‘birds”.
Some years ago, she discovered the work of the Canadian photographer Chris Jordan, who depicted rotting carcasses of baby Laysan albatrosses in Midway Atoll due to the feeding of plastic by their parents, who find floating plastic in the middle of the ocean and mistake it for food. His pictures made an enduring impression on her and were the inspiration for her work “doodstille vogels”.
“At the start of my education at IKA, it was a real quest and sometimes I was lost. I had to learn how to use an inspirational theme and which techniques to use to express it. Thanks to the support and help of different coaches, I managed to cope and I am very proud of the result.”
In future, she hopes to work with the material glass to express her own story and want to explore other disciplines to expand her possibilities. 

Hilde Sels
Hilde Sels (°1961) considers glass as a medium to express her personal thoughts and feelings. The process of creation is a challenge of endurance, thoughts and the use of the material.
“Glass did attract me from my early youth: the transparent buttons in the button box of my mother intrigued me and I considered them as jewels. When I came some years ago in contact with the technique of glass blowing, the fascination became so strong, that is had to start this training: I had to discover glass and its numerous possibilities myself. At the start, my preference went to glass blowing: the process of semi liquid to hard and the reverse to make a creation makes that I can forget everything around me. Later on, I discovered the other interesting aspect of glass.”
The theme of her graduation work is birth and dead. She has passed a long way around these themes starting with fear, expression and acceptance. Her latest work shows that even during birth, dead is not far away.
The possibility to experiment with glass and to discover things during the training is very interesting. The presence of a multifunctional oven is a valued addition. During her specialization years, she wants to improve her blowing capacities and to learn new techniques.

Monique Westerman
Monique Westerman (°1965) was trained in architecture at the “Stedelijk Hoger Instituut voor Architectuur en Stedebouw” (HAISG) in Gent and jewelry at the “Academie voor Schone Kunsten” in Antwerp, Belgium.
Her training in architecture is seen in her graduation work “Cities of souvenirs”.
“When we are going abroad on holidays, we bring back a souvenir of something we appreciate as a memory. Over time, these memories fade and if the think about them, we create an own image, that is not in accordance with reality. With “Cities of memories”, I create cities”’ where reality and fantasy meet each other. The transparency of glass refers to the mind, the black color of the glass to matter, the earth. “

The work of the graduates is shown at the IKA on 21-22 June 2014.
 
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