Hannah Gibson: Exploring Sustainability, Memory and Our Relationship with the Material World
In 2026, Hannah Gibson created Recycling Narratives, No Matter the Weight, in collaboration with textile artist Naomi Beevers. This collaborative work was shared with the public at Laura Donefer’s Glass Fashion Show held at the Glass Art Society conference at the Corning Museum of Glass in June. The work consists of thousands of individual pieces of recycled cast glass, each made from donated glass carrying its own story and hand assembled into a wearable dress. Created from glass contributed by people around the world, the installation explores the emotional and physical weight carried through illness, loss, hope and survival, transforming individual experiences into a collective portrait of resilience, compassion and connection.
Working predominantly with recycled glass, Gibson transforms glass that has played a meaningful role in people’s lives, from medicine bottles and insulin vials to perfume bottles, windscreens and everyday domestic objects, into cast sculpture that preserves the histories embedded within the material. Every object is carefully selected for the story it carries, allowing experiences of healing, celebration, loss and survival to become inseparable from the finished work. Through this process, she invites audiences to reconsider the social, emotional and cultural significance of the objects that shape our lives.
Growing up at the foothills of Snowdonia, overlooking the Menai Strait, Gibson developed an early fascination with geology, leading her to study Geology at the University of Edinburgh. While there, an interest in glass grew into a lifelong passion. She later completed a Master’s in Glass, where she began developing the bodies of work Recycling Narrativesand Whispering Sweet Nothings. Returning as Artist in Residence, her research explored materiality and the transformative potential of recycled glass, laying the foundations for a practice that continues to investigate the relationship between object, memory and cultural heritage.
Gibson’s work has received international recognition, including the Award of Excellence at Habatat Detroit in 2024, First Prize in the Glass Art Society’s Trace: An Exploration of Sustainable Glass Art in 2023, being shortlisted for the Coburg Prize for Contemporary Glass in 2022, and being Highly Commended in The Glass Prize in both 2021 and 2022. Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Corning Museum of Glass, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the Imagine Museum, the National Liberty Museum and the Royal Scottish Academy, as well as at SOFA Chicago, COLLECT, PAN Amsterdam, the British Glass Biennale, Habatat Detroit Fine Art, Habatat North Carolina, The Etienne Gallery, Gallery TEN and London Glassblowing. Her work will be on view in The Other Glass: The Art of Recycled Glass, at the Stourbridge Glass Museum, Wordsley, August 28 through February 27, 2027.
https://www.stourbridgeglassmuseum.org.uk/featured-exhibitions/
Alongside her studio practice, Gibson creates public art, delivers lectures and workshops internationally, and continues to expand the possibilities of recycled glass. Gibson’s work demonstrates how materials that have completed their original purpose can become enduring works of art, preserving personal narratives while contributing to wider conversations about sustainability, memory and our relationship with the material world.
States Gibson: “For almost three decades, my practice has explored the creative and technical potential of recycled glass. As both a glass artist and a geologist, I am fascinated by the stories held within materials and the traces of human experience they contain. Through recycling and recasting these objects, I seek to preserve their histories while creating new forms and meanings.”
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