Niall Shukla, Broken Glass Artist and Film Director from the United Kingdom. Photo © Courtesy of the artist
Tell us what you do and your beginnings.
I came to this artistic medium in a slightly unusual way. Until a few years ago, my professional career was solely as a Writer & Film Director (A Doll Distorted and Guilt, the films). My last film qualified for a BAFTA and an OSCAR was selected for over 60 festivals and won 12 Jury Awards. I then began working on the scripts for my first feature film. Writing is a lengthy process with lots of planning that can take months or years. I think I started making physical art again just as an occasional break away from the writing process.
I had no agenda; I was just making art for myself. But then I decided to share my work online and my work went viral — the first video I ever posted of my artwork gained over 4 million views in the first 4 days. And over my first year, I amassed a following of over 100k followers on different social media platforms. All of a sudden I had an art career as well as a film career.
In terms of my actual art: I create sculptures by carefully cracking glass to form impressions of human faces, animals, or whatever else I want to express. Working with glass is unpredictable, which is part of what I love about it. While each strike is meticulously planned in terms of placement and pressure, not every attempt is successful—one wrong hit, and I may need to start anew with a fresh piece of glass. This process means I can often go through several pieces of glass before achieving the final image.
What does your work aim to say?
I started working in this particular medium during a time in my life when I was in quite a sad and dark place emotionally and wanted to explore the idea of turning something negative into a positive. To me, this is one of the beauties of my medium. Breaking something is often seen as tragic, and I liked the idea of taking something broken and turning it into something positive and beautiful.
I feel like that’s something we all have to do in life when we encounter painful or difficult experiences. We have to find a way to turn our pain or negative experiences into something positive and life-affirming. I’m a firm believer that some of the most difficult experiences of my life have ended up being the most positive ones. What’s interesting is that making art during this difficult time in my life helped me emotionally emerge from that dark place.
Where do you find inspiration for your art?
My inspiration is an instinctual thing. I don’t know where it comes from, but I think it is like a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it. I of course am inspired by art, films, music, and literature. I get most of my inspiration from doing my actual art. The more you create, the more you stir the creative soup in your mind and the more ideas you get. You also reach a point where you have so many ideas that you know you won’t be able to do all of them, so you have to select the things that you think are most important to pursue.
Could you give us some insight into your creative process?
The majority of my artwork starts with a huge amount of planning. Cracked glass is incredibly monochromatic and therefore incredibly hard to shade with. You may have an image you want to make in cracked glass or an idea you want to present in cracked glass, but it may be incredibly challenging to portray that image effectively.
So, I spend a long time planning my designs, figuring out how I’m going to crack the glass in a way that portrays the image correctly. I usually do a white charcoal drawing on black paper before each sculpture, which helps me plan out my artwork. I find this helpful because the type of glass I use is very expensive, so it is good to have a plan. But very often the glass will crack in a way I had not planned and those changes can end up being beautiful and I go with where the glass is taking me.
I constantly have to adapt my plan to the glass and not the other way around. Aside from this, there is a lot of trial and error cracking glass with the hammer and chisel, and testing on multiple sheets of glass before getting to one that I am happy with.
What are your future projects?
This is a difficult question as I have always tried not to tell people my plans, and prefer just working on them in silence to keep the pressure on. But I can say that I’m working on some large pieces that I think will push the boundaries of what can be made in cracked glass and I am experimenting with designs that are far more difficult and complex. I will be revealing them first on my social media channels.
Interview by Fabio Pariante: X • Instagram • Website
