Meet: Fused glass artist Dreya Bennett

Giant jellyfish blooms and iridescent shoals, curling seaweed tendrils and the spread of sea birds’ wings. Ocean scenes captured in delicately fused layers of glass, catching and refracting the light– these artworks live beyond their frames.

Glass is a liquid, an incredibly slow-moving liquid, but a liquid nonetheless.

“The ocean is all-encompassing; its colour, sounds and smell; its reflections, translucent quality and the constant movement can hold your attention like nothing else,” says Dreya. “To me, glass has a similar quality to water and is the perfect medium to express it. It’s enigmatic; you can look at it, or through it. It’s there and not there.”

Flying high 

Dreya’s legacy on these sands is a big one. She was at the forefront of the burgeoning sport of kitesurfing in the 1990s, establishing Watergate Bay as one of its primary locations and opening up kitesurfing for more people, particularly women.

Her first time on a kite, however, will always stay with her. “I'd recently won [the TV show] Gladiators,” she recalls. “Henry Ashworth (founder of the Extreme Academy) met me on the beach and chucked me on a power kite at high tide. I was launched off my feet and dumped on my face about five meters further down the beach – but I was hooked.”

As well as taking home world records in the sport, Dreya also took part in some seriously impressive expeditions, including crossing from the Isles of Scilly to Watergate Bay. Together with other female kitesurfing pros, they surfed in memory of a friend Silke, a fellow competitor (at the time the world number two), who sadly passed away in a kitesurfing accident. “We were all very good friends on tour; but we all used to compete with each other. So doing this expedition together, not trying to win was very poignant.”

A window to the past 

“As a kid, when I was asked, 'What do you want to be when you’re older?’, I would always say ‘be an artist’,” she says. “I studied at Falmouth Art School, before taking on a degree in Architectural Stain Glass at Swansea.” Drawn to the otherworldy qualities of glass work, Dreya later wrote a dissertation focussing on fused glass, which is now the technique she works with everyday. 

“I started with a tiny kiln in my garage, just playing around. I'm totally self-taught with fusing. It involves a lot of experimenting. My electricity bill is something else.”

When it comes to creating her glass artworks, it all starts with the seed of an idea. “If I want to make, say, a jellyfish, I'll go and research and collect as many visual references as I can. Then I’ll throw some ideas in the kiln. It can sometimes take years to get it right. The hard bit is remembering how I've made things.”

What to expect on her Watergate Bay residency

Dreya reminds us that she’s not a painter, and this will be no traditional residency.  “Working out what to do while I’m at Watergate Bay has been an interesting challenge, pushing me in new directions,” she says.

“As I won't have a kiln there, I’m slowly developing some new processes. There will be lots of barefooted people walking around the hotel, and glass and feet obviously don’t mix well. So I’ll have to keep my work contained in a separate space,” she says. But while the glass cutting might happen behind doors, the pre-process is one that Dreya hopes to be informed by both the shapes, sights and sounds of the shoreline and hotel spaces. 

“I’ve been trying all sorts of things,” she says. “One idea was to work with feathers, but when I tried, they just burnt away to nothing. So now I’m thinking about taking casts from rocks and imprinting shells, or painting on glass wafers with my powders while I'm down there; the possibilities are endless.”

Dreya will be bringing her endless possibilities down to Watergate Bay for a long-weekend artist residency on 11 September. Pop by to say hello, to see how she’s applying her talents – or witness her final piece, which will be displayed on the hotel walls later in the year.

Dreya will be returning between 6-9 November.