A life-long fascination with moving colour and light motivates glass blower Ron van der Vlugt. His work has a sense of movement, an instant of fluid light and colour frozen in glass.

As a child Ron experimented in the dark with torches and pieces of coloured plastic from car tail lights. As a glass blower, he is intrigued by the elusive challenge of capturing the shifting qualities of light and colour as the glass moves from a glowing, flowing, molten state into a cool, hard, solid shape.

Like the Italian glass blowers, Ron works "hot and fast" with few tools, working the glass quickly while it is fluid and hot, relying on the natural forces of gravity and spinning to shape it. He says this makes him more in tune with the glass, so that while he doesn't always control the tricky medium, at least he understands it.

Ron developed his art first in the US, at California Art Glass, then the Wanganui Glass Blowing School, and the Toyama Institute of Glass Art in Japan where he was exposed to Japanese aesthetics and the sophisticated techniques of the Italians. Ron now works from his own De Flute Glass studio in Rotorua.

by Sarah Moodie