I started the TRACES Project by collecting the trunks of dead trees and using them as a mould to blow glass in. The trunks are from trees, which either fell in a thunderstorm or were cut down because of illness. I collected a pine and an old cut-down oak tree from Germany and a lime and a birch tree from the Netherlands. The moulds where created by scraping out the core of the trunk, reaching the inner life of the tree.
In the core I found soft parts and rotten parts. I found branches growing through the whole of the trunk and I found the structure of the
wood itself. The blown glass objects are mappings of the inner landscape of these dead trees, giving them a new life in glass.
In the following weeks and months I will collect trees and trunks from many different places and countries to use as a mould for glass
objects. I already received a trunk from Finland, Slovenia and soon from Chile.

From these blown object I will make a installation of hanging and standing ‘TRACES’.

This collection of objects will resemble trees from different places and different countries, of different age, each tree with its own
story and history. I will get those trunks from people I know from different situations. I know them from childhood and they have moved, I know them from study exchanges or from my work. So this installation will bring ‘glass trees’ from many countries together, but also all the people, who will be part of it. 

Also everybody is welcome to send me his trunk out of a garden, a tree with its personal story, and I will make an object from it.