Artist Statement

My artistic practice rests in the meeting of opposites – between glass and clay, between the fleeting and the enduring, between fire and earth. Two materials with different temperaments, yet sharing the same origin in the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire.

Glass is, to me, the embodiment of air – light-bearing, fragile, and in constant motion. Working with glass is like dancing with fire; an intense interplay where heat, rhythm, and complete presence shape the moment.

Clay is its counterpart – the earth, still and grounded. Within it reside silence, time, and the memory of the hand.

Between these worlds, a dialogue emerges. In the encounter between the solid and the transient, I seek a point of balance – a place where materials, memories, and processes intertwine, allowing something new to take form.

After more than three decades with glass as my primary means of expression, I have returned to clay, the first material I encountered as a young artist. In this return, a circle is completed, yet a new direction also unfolds – a continuation in which experience and origin reflect one another.

Here, in the borderland between air and earth, I search for the moment when the materials begin to speak. When light refracts through glass, when the hand shapes clay – that is when the quiet dialogue at the heart of my work comes into being.

With great enthusiasm, hard work, unyieldingness and long-term planning, Malin Mena has built and developed her unique company, the Glass Tower Studio Glassworks [Glastornet Studioglashytta]. Through her goal-oriented approach, she has from the bottom transformed a former water tower to a well-functioning glassworks.

Start-up of the year, 2007, Karlskrona Municipality

”GLASS FOR CELEBRATIONS & FOR EVERYDAY USE”