We’re on vacation this week. For the first half of the week, we were staycationing at home, and our lovely 8-year-old niece and her equally wonderful mother came over for their first kayak, then our not-quite-2-year-old niece came over and we spent some time on our dock looking at the fish and crabs and snails and feeding the seagulls (her favorite activity, other than peek-a-boo, which is gaining in popularity daily, in case you were wondering).  Now we’re at the beach with our besties, spending as much time in the ocean as possible. So today’s beautiful thing fits right in with our water-themed week (and life).

Everything about this artist’s story and work make me happy. Self-taught artist Ben Young was raised in Waihi Beach, New Zealand, and currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia. A surfer and professional boat-builder, Young’s relationship to water is impossible to miss in his work. Being a huge fan of the water, his work speaks to me on a level that few others’ does.

Not only are his works lovely and graceful, Young creates them manually, making them feel even more connected to the sea. He works in hand-cut sheets of glass, which he laminates to create his beautiful, clearly organic shapes.

“I love watching the two dimensional shapes evolve into three-dimensional creations and the different way the light plays inside the glass. I love the liquid qualities the glass brings with it. It enables me to play with lighting and watch the glass react. When lit from beneath, the light reflects and gives off the illusion of the piece being brought to life. I hope viewers might imagine the work as something ‘living’ that creates the illusion of space, movement, depth and sense of spatial being. I like to play with the irony between the glass being a solid material and how I can form such natural and organic shapes.”

Since the internet gods now see fit to suggest “similar” posts when you spend any time on a site, I thought I’d share with you a few of Ben’s colleagues. Pierre Carreau, Baptiste Debombourg, and Mario Ceroli are two more artists also creating works with or about the ocean. I want all of it.