Glass festival adds digital twist

A NEW digital element will be part of this year’s Festival of Glass Expo, when it returns to Drysdale for a 13th year at Drysdale Community Hub on August 27.

The Festival of Glass Inc. has launched its new Drysdale Glass Art Trail App aiming to promote guests of this year’s event to interact with various glassworks and mosaics throughout the Bellarine town.

Festival of Glass committee member Glenda McNaughton led the charge in developing the new app, which takes expo attendees to four major locations in Drysdale to complete 10 puzzles.

“Each year we try to do something different and as a result of not being able to bring over people from overseas, we’re turning towards the digital world with this app,” she said.

“It’s also a great way to reengage and reconnect the community to Drysdale, and we believe our new puzzle trail activity on the app can do that.

“We hope to grow the app out from Central Drysdale and towards the southern area of the town, namely around Lake Lorne, but talks for that expansion are ongoing at the moment.”

The Central Drysdale Glass Puzzle Trail activity features fun puzzles at a handful of locations for trailgoers to undertake, showing off some of the best mosaic murals out of the 50 pieces of art on Drysdale’s Arts Trail.

The Puzzle Trail activity takes about an hour to complete, and prizes will be up for grabs to those who can complete the Puzzle Trail.

L-R: Festival of Glass Inc.’s Roxy van Beveren, Glenda McNaughton, and convenor Mercedes Drummond hope as many visitors come along to the Festival of Glass Expo on August 27.

The Festival of Glass Expo displays glass art in sculptural, wearable, and functional mediums across the full spectrum of hot and cold glass techniques.

Techniques such as flamework, studio/furnace glass, kiln formed glass, etching, stained glass, leadlight, mosaics and beadwork will be shown across the six-hour event on August 27 from 10am-4pm.

Festival convenor Mercedes Drummond said the committee had been extremely busy preparing for the festival.

“We’re starting to measure up the entire Community Hub to get our stallholders up to date on where they will be exhibiting their works.

“That feeling of ‘busy-ness’ is good for the committee because when the expo was cancelled during those couple of years and it had to go online, it lost a bit of its soul, and we’re starting to feel more of that normality again.

“One of the major aspects of this festival that we have missed over the past few years is the glassmaking community coming together and sharing ideas.

“We hope we can get that feeling back again this month.”