Æsa Björk graduated from the Glass Department of Edinburgh College of Art with a 1st class BA (Hons) degree in 1995 and MA in 1997. In 1994 she was an exchange student at VSUP in Prague and studied with Vladímir Kopecky. This both influenced her work and encouraged her in her pursuit of working with glass as a sculptural material. She has frequented the Pilchuck Glass School as a student and TA since 1998 where in 1999 she also was an Emerging Artist in Residence and an instructor in 2016. In 2006 she was an Artist in Residence at the Corning Museum of Glass. Her work has been shown internationally, she has received numerous grants among them a 5 years working grant from the Norwegian Ministry of Culture 2015-2019. She has had several public art commissions in Norway where she co-founded the open access gallery and workshop S12 in 2005. From 2011-2014 She held a 3 year position as a visiting artist and faculty at the School of Art and Design, Sculpture/Dimensional Studies, Alfred University. Her work is in the collections of the National Museum of Art and Design in Oslo and KODE Art Museums in Bergen, Norway. She currently works and lives in Bergen Norway where she also is an artistic advisor for S12
“Æsa Björk Thorsteinsdóttir works with big glass objects which she includes in larger installations. By combining glass objects with video projections, she has previously demonstrated different ways of experiencing time: from the short moment which perhaps only leaves a faint, frozen track for posterity, to the experience of different states of being in human life. Through a fascination with the eye as a kind of interface between internal and external reality, she uses glass and movements of the eye as a meeting place for reflections on life and existence, on seeing and being seen. Thorsteinsdóttir’s glass casts of hands are a continuation of her exploration of aspects of existence. The various hands posess a signifacant proximity and act as doors into a large range of emotions. Through her focus on the human body, she looks at the theme of both the brutal and the vulnerable nature of transience.”
Anne Karin Jortveit – tranlation Benedict Barclay
Member of
MHR, Reykjavík Sculptor association, SIM, The association of Icelandic visual artists, NK, norske kunsthåndverkere / Norwegian Crafts Association, GAS, Glass Art Society
