Frantic Gallery open all weekend for 1st anniversary

Fran Anderton's Frantic Glass Gallery is open over Labour Weekend. Photo / Paul Brooks

It's been a year since Fran Anderton opened her new Frantic studio and gallery, so she's celebrating with a 1st Anniversary Opening of the gallery over the whole of Labour Weekend. Come and admire the work, buy some and take it home.

She used to work from the back and side of the garage, but with the newly built studio Fran considers herself spoilt.

And Castlecliff suits her. An easy walk to the beach, it's quiet, the outlook is semi-rural.

Renowned for her fruit pieces, Fran is a glass artist with more than just her signature tamarillos to show for it. Her gallery is a showcase for all types of art and utilitarian pieces, from perfume bottles (with glass stoppers) and drinking glasses to cast objets d'art.

Beyond the gallery is her work space, with benches, projects, a grinder and sandblasting machine, as well as her pride and joy, her Mobile Mini Dragon Furnace.

Wednesday is her glass blowing day.

Fran came to Whanganui from Dunedin to attend the glass school in 2000.

"I did the three-year diploma course; left and did a tiki tour, trying to find a place to live, and came back to Whanganui."

Fran bought her place in 2004, seeing the potential for a place to live and work.

Before coming to Whanganui, she had a craft business creating pressed flowers in glass.

"I used to grow the flowers, put them in lots and lots of presses, leave them for a couple of months until they'd dried out, two lots of flat glass pressed together, foil around the outside …" She would sell them at the Octagon Market in Dunedin.

Fran sees herself as creative more than artistic.

"I always wanted to do things with my hands.

"Glass blowing is a mind plus hand process, a step at a time. It looks like a fluid dance when you watch somebody doing a glass blowing piece, but if you don't do one step right, the next step is not going to work out."

She also casts pieces.

"Blowing is more of a passion because it's immediate. Casting is completely different because it's more a cathartic thing. You can spend hours just modelling something … but the immediacy of blowing is like an adrenalin rush, then you get it out of the kiln to see how it turned out, whereas with casting you have to wait three months to see if your one piece has worked."

Fran says she gets quite fond of each piece during the course of its creation … then you move on.

Frantic Glass Gallery
138 Karaka St, Castlecliff
1st Anniversary Opening
Labour Weekend – October 24, 25 and 26, 10am to 4pm.
A wide variety of work for sale.