The glass life of a scientistClotilde Huyghues-Despointes, PhD
“Purposeful imperfection”
I am a scientist who ditched the badge-scanned, jargon-soaked biotech world for the unapologetic chaos of warm glass. After years of delivering scientific strategy with corporate precision, I now fuse glass into unruly, neon-alley–style faces with plenty to say.My studio is my lab, except the experiments are louder, messier, and “compliance” has been ceremoniously set on fire. I use heat like a power tool to bend rules, warp lines, push color past polite limits, and embrace the cracks and distortions that give each work its pulse.While some works lean to the traditionally unspiced, every face carries a bit of defiance: a crooked smile, a fractured contour, an eye that watches you back. Imperfect on purpose, loud on purpose, alive because glass never behaves, and I’m addicted to that honesty.Glass gives me everything I love: Precision with room for chaos, structure with surprise, and a material that behaves like a living organism if you listen closely. Every firing is a conversation between science and serendipity, and each face a new character stepping out of the kiln, with its own pulse and purpose.This is where my brain feels at home: In the experiment, the risk, the moment heat transforms a flat sheet into something with attitude.