SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Glass sculptor Rosalind Mercredi spent a lot of hours in front of her kiln at North Soul Studio this summer.

After four previous trips to the Great Northern Arts Festival, she knew she had to amass a large quantity of art to sell for this visit.

Glass sculptor Rosalind Mercredi holds a work titled Fire and Ice Torso. The colourful and dynamic structure is built using a method Mercredi calls "random sculpture." Mercredi is bringing a large number of small and large art pieces to the Great Northern Arts Festival. - Daron Letts/NNSL photo

She created lots of small pieces that move swiftly out of her Down To Earth Gallery in Old Town.

She is bringing fused glass and stained glass ornaments, sun catchers and jewelry, much of it involving Metis and Northern themes.

She designed a creamy-white set of glassware, including a bowl, trivet and coasters, highlighted by Hudson's Bay blanket stripes. Ptarmigans, northern lights, ulus, inuksuks and drum dancers also parade through her popular collection.

Her larger pieces include stained glass bowls, vases and framed mirrors. These works twine glass together with natural materials such as richly-coloured stones and caribou antler. Several larger glass sculptures will form a centrepiece for her festival display. She designed a medicine wheel plate mounted on caribou antler with glass inlay that demands attention and she is bringing a stained glass raven to work on during the festival.

The raven, like much of Mercredi's larger sculpture, reflects what Mercredi calls "random sculpture."

"Stained glass is usually very organized," she said. "This is random."

Although the structures are built using coloured glass, they bear little resemblence to conventional stained glass work, where elements fit together as seamlessly as a jigsaw puzzle.

"When you work on one thing you think of 20 more ideas as you go," she said. "I want this to be wild and out of the box."

The end result of her method is an energetic three-dimensional image of shape and colour that lures the eye in multiple directions.

Nowhere is this better expressed than in her Fire and Ice Torso, an ambitious sculpture painstakingly crafted for the annual Iceolation Art Show last March. Glass envelops the form of a human body with shards of glass that shoot out like flames in a bonfire or ice crystals in a snowflake. Mercredi plans to use the festival to reconnect with friend and collaborator Sheila Alexandrovich, a basket artist from Mount Lorne, Yukon, who was also invited to Inuvik by organizers.

"We don't often get together so this is a great experience," Alexandrovich said.

Mercredi and Alexandrovich will collaborate on an Earth Torso using woven willow branches, glass and stone. Alexandrovich practices a basket-making method she calls "random weave" that compliments Mercredi's wild aesthetic.

Alexandrovich calls the collaboration "an experimentation in technique."