Professor Zora Palova
Zora Palova is currently a professor in Glass as the University of Sunderland's School of Arts, Design, Media and Culture. In 1996 Zora came from Bratislava in Slovakia to take up a full-time position as research professor in glass at Sunderland. She had already established an international reputation as a glass artist through exhibitions of her work around the world, her work in public collections and major commissions received. Her reputation has secured further commissions, such as the eight metre high "Guardian" sculpture in Gold Topaz glass at the Headquarters of the Association of Dutch Insurers in the Hague, unveiled by the Queen of Holland in November 1996, and 1998 the five metre high "Light Transformer" commissioned to stand as a landmark at the entrance to the National Glass Centre.
The dynamism, sensitivity and artistic philosophy of her work, while unique to her, owes much to the excellent training she received in the studio of the renowned Vaclav Cigler at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. Zora was exposed to the fine and distinctive traditions of Central European glass making what was then Czechoslovakia. She evolved the aesthetic conviction the artistic creation represents materialised thought transformed into the physical being of Glass. But Glass for her only lives through light and its interaction with form in glass. To encapture light on surfaces, to hold it, allow it to give life to form is as fundamental to her physical creations as it is a metaphor of the human spirit. Zora's strife to communicate her emotions and beliefs directly through the medium of her art in glass is paralleled by her infectious and compelling ability to communicate as both a teacher and in her personal life.
