Biography
Chris Day (b. Derby, UK 1968) started his working life as a plumber and heating engineer in the West Midlands of England for two decades before deciding to change his life. Since graduating from Wolverhampton University in 2019, followed by a postgraduate degree in Design and Applied Art in 2021, his artistic parctice of glassbowing has been recognised. Day received a special commendation at the British Glass Biennale, Stourbridge (2019), which was followed by a solo show at Vessel Gallery in London’s Notting Hill (2020). Group exhibitions have included at 2 Temple Place, London (2024); and Harewood House Trust, Leeds (2021) where he has created an installation at All Saint’s Church at Harewood House.
Day employs materials he used in his previous career, such as copper piping and wire. His pieces tackle the black experience in both Britain and the USA, based around his own mixed race heritage – often focussing on the history of the slave trade in the eighteenth century, as well as events leading up to the American civil rights movement. He says that his main purpose is to ‘engage the audience on issues that are hard to confront on many levels, using art to help overcome some of the traumas that haunt our collective past’. His work is already held in a number of private collections, as well as the V&A, the National Museum of Scotland and The Chrysler Museum, Virginia, USA.
