During the summer of 1986 I took several workshops offered by Sheridan Collage. One of them was with Sheila Mahut and Jeff Goodman. They were amazing glassblowers both having trained at Sheridan but continued with their studies at Illinois State University.

I learned a lot of colour tricks (there are countless ways to add and manipulate colour in glass) and some new ways of working with and shaping the hot glass.

One of these was mold blowing. You can make simple or complex molds out of a variety of materials. But plywood was the easiest and fastest material for me to work with. And the more you used the wood molds the more texture you got from the charring of the wood.

Well, this was way too much fun. I could manipulate fairly large whacks of glass and actually make something out of them. This piece was made out of two separate pieces that came from the same mold. One inverted on top of the other and glued into place. Then bits of shell and glass were added, eventually mounting the whole thing on a plywood base.

Dan Crieghton was and is the Glassmaster at Sheridan collage. He had arranged a student show at the Montreal Gallery of Elena Lee.

Elena is a huge supporter of ‘Glass Art’ in Canada. This piece was made for that show. Let me tell you the pressure that comes from knowing that the public is going to look at your work and possibly buy it is staggering. For me exams are nothing compared to the stress of public scrutiny.

So ‘Nexus’ was made. There was a buzzword in the art community at the time and that was "architectonic". That is to say something that looks like a building. So that was my inspiration, the name ‘Nexus’ means link or a sort of focal point. I was at the time, very serious and thought that my ’art’ should have serious names. How pretentious can you get? I still take my work seriously but I try to be a little more realistic about the names.

Nexus was bought by a collector in Montreal. It was the first major piece that I ever sold.