About
Liz Waugh McManus has a multifaceted art practice that embraces sculpture and multimedia. She makes installations using her primary sculptural medium of glass. Glass for her is an interface to use in conjunction with other processes, techniques and media, offering both a metaphorical substance and a material body that captures the ephemeral content of moving light.
21st century technologies (CAD, 3-D print, water jet cutting, electronics and moving image) are used alongside ancient and studio glass-forming techniques to create animated objects which allude to narratives (biography, traditional tales and global issues of environmental care, anthropogenic effects on biodiversity, climate change, human migration, and natural disasters). Creating the sense of a living presence is an important thread running through her work, whether achieved through new technologies, animation, performance or in sculptural form. She seeks audience engagement through animacy, storytelling, playfulness, and interactivity, drawing in the viewer through time-based media and real-time interactions.
More about her creative process, and work in process can be seen on her Instagram account @lizwaughmcmanus
Bio
After a Foundation, Liz studied Art and Design in Social Contexts (Dip HE) at Dartington College of Arts, and Visual Studies/Art History (BA hons) at Oxford Brookes. She furthered her interest in the art, society and non-Western artforms by completing a PhD in Social Anthropology of Art at the Queen's University of Belfast, spending a research year in Jamaica. Her interest in the performing and participatory arts at Dartington led to her becoming co-director of several arts companies, receiving public funding from the arts council, local authorities and trusts to produce theatre shows and deliver projects in education and community settings (Obelon Arts, Koan Arts and Greenfingers Productions). While enjoying these collaborative projects, she also developed her personal art practice. Discovering glass as a medium in the 2000s, she learnt through classes with major glass artists (including Irene Frolic, Clifford Rainey, Tessa Clegg and Stephen Durrow) and mentorships with Angela Thwaites and Emma Woffenden.
Her artistic investigations continued in a practice-based PhD at the University of Sunderland based in the National Glass Centre, developing an ‘Internet of Glass Things: glass artworks as digitally communicating objects’, that blends the qualities of glass with the capabilities of electronics for creating interactions and incorporating media, in order to create new kinds of artwork. Liz coined the term ‘Internet of Glass Things’, as an equivalent to ‘e-textiles’ or ‘paper circuits’, to describe glass blended with computational materials. Her PhD thesis can be downloaded here.
Liz is an experienced arts tutor and project manager. (Please make contact for full CV). For details of classes at her studio please click here.
She is available for residencies (site-specific, gallery or heritage) and to run projects for educational and community settings embracing environmental art, sculpture, glass, film, animation, video, puppetry or e-craft. For more details including projects with young people e.g. Eye Arts Club please see www.koanarts.org or https://obelonarts.org
Selected exhibitions
2025 LAND, The Art Station, Saxmundham, Suffolk 2025 New Every Morning commission, The Battery of Ideas, Lowestoft, Suffolk 2024 Ground Up, GroundWork Gallery, King’s Lynn. 2024 Silica, Designer Makers/Diss Cornhall 2024 Glqss Beginnings, General Office Gallery, International Festival of Glass 2024 Infinity in Our Hands, Sound Scene, Hirshhorn Art Museum, Washington DC. 2024 Evolution, Glass Art Society conference, Berlin 2022/23 1.5 Degrees, MSUM (Science Gallery outreach project), Detroit 2022 Collaborations, Woverhampton Art Gallery. 2022 Whispers from the Past and the Present, at Trades House, Glasgow and Wasps Creative Academy, Inverness 2022 British Glass Biennale, International Festival of Glass 2021 Rule 42, Stretched Language, Bonita Museum, US 2019 Celestial Bodies, CGS, International Festival of Glass
2018 Inheritance, Norwich Castle Museum (and invited speaker)
2017 Water and Music, Contemporary Glass, Pyramid Gallery
2016 Glass 2016 - 15 British Artists, Pyramid Gallery 2015 Migration - Journeys in glass and video art, solo show, Belfry Arts Centre
2014 Coburg International Glass Prize, Veste Coburg Art
Collections/European Museum of Modern Glass
Fantastic Light, Galllery in the Garden
Solo show, The Cut Arts Centre
Glass show, The Bank Arts Centre
2013 Glass show, Craftco
Artworks Group Show, Bury St Edmunds
Waveney Springs Open Studios
Two person show, Itzal Aktiboa Gallery, St Jean Pied de Port
Art Alive!, Norwich Assembly Rooms
2012 Artworks Group Show, Bury St Edmunds
British Glass Bienale, International Festival of Glass
Snakes and Ladders, Contemporary Glass Society, Belfry Arts Centre
Glass Games, The Gallery, Redchurch St, London
2011 On the Brink, Belfry Arts Centre
Melt, London Glassblowing Gallery
Flying Colours, Fascinating Forms, Norwich Assembly Rooms
2010 Essence, London Glassblowing Gallery
Contemporary Glass, Belfry Arts Centre
British Glass Biennales (shortlsted for Best in Show|
Recollect, Burgh House and London Glassblowing Gallery
2008 Artworks Group Show, Bury St Edmunds
2007 Suffolk Showcase, Smiths Row Gallery
2006 Liquid Light, Frome
Four person show, Halesworth Gallery
Glass, Metal and Stone, Ip-Art Festival
Secrets in the Garden, Thornham Walled Garden
2005 Glassworks, solo show, The Cut Arts Centre
Cairn, Bergh Apton Sculpture Trail
Awards and Residencies
2025 Firstsite Collectors’ Group Artists Bursary Award
2024 ‘Commended’ for CGS Glass Sellers’ & Contemporary Glass Society Graduate GLASS PRIZE and NEW GRADUATE REVIEW 2024.
2024 The GroundWork Gallery artistic residency 2024: Extraction 4 Ground Up 2023 Collusion Art-Tech-Play Interaction and Projection Day
2023 The Art Station - Environmental Mapping Research & Development project
2022 Longlisted for Lumen Prize 2022 for art and technology 2021 Mike Davies Innovation Scholarship 2021 Glass Lab Scholarship 2018 Pilchuck Glass School Scholarship
2010 Commended for ‘best in show’, British Glass Biennale
Contemporary Glass Society mentorship
2007 North Lands Creative Glass scholarship
2006 AA2A residency, Norwich University College of the Arts
2005 Professional development training, Suffolk County Council/A-N
2004 Firstsite Gallery mentorship
2003 AA2A residency, University of Hertfordshire
2002 North Lands Creative Glass scholarship
Publications
Featured in:
Sio: Verre et Nouvelles Technologies dans la Création Contemporaine by Manuel Fadat, 2017
Crafting Conductive Surfaces in Glass, by Dr Jeffrey Sarmiento, Making Futures International Research Conference paper, 2017
The Coburg Glass Prize 2014 catalogue, 2014
British Glass Biennale catalogue, 2012
Mouldmaking for Glass by Angela Thwaites, 2011
British Glass Biennale catalogue, 2010
Co-author of The Singing Storycloth, A&C Black
Tuition
Click on the image for details
Liz runs classes in glass and sculpture techniques from her studio in Suffolk, UK, and elsewhere.
For futher details, please click on the image above.