Kirsti Taiviola

Kirsti Taiviola (MA) is a glass artist, designer and educator. The red thread in Taiviola’s career has been an interest in the possibilities of glass and light as tools of transmitting observations and making something visible. She has worked with e.g. questions of materiality, craftsmanship and authorship and her works often pay respect to the traditional craftsmanship of glassmaking. She frequently uses handmade free-form glass lenses to direct rays of light into different patterns and figures of caustics.

Alongside her work as an artist Kirsti Taiviola has long served as a teacher in the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, where she teaches glass art and design. Her works are included e.g. in the collections of the State Art Deposit Collection, the Finnish Glass Museum and the Porvoo Art Museum. She works in Savio artists’ community in Kerava.

During her residency at S12 Taiviola worked on a series of hand blown glass lenses for a project consisting of a stop motion animation & light installation made with glass. The project is an ode both to the analog process of film making and the craft of lens making.