Clear view of glass art

The exhibition, titled Transition - A Captured Moment, showcases Asaka's distinctive style and experimental craft, which explores the tension between nature and the human experience.

In the exhibition, opened last night by ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher, he explores the physical attributes and changing forms of glass using plastic and styrofoam moulds to shape the pieces, which resemble solid ice and glistening razor sharp shards.

Asaka, who was last year's winner of the prestigious Ranamok Glass Prize, graduated in 2008 with a Masters Degree from the ANU School of Art Glass Workshop, and has since worked from the Canberra Glassworks.

He said his view of nature evolved from his boyhood experiences of climbing mountains with his father.

''I used to spend a lot of time in the mountains with my dad, serious mountaineering with a big backpack. Up there it's so beautiful surrounded by forests, animals and plants I had never seen before.

''But at the same time, when you get to a certain altitude, what they call the tree line, it changes and nothing grows above there. It all becomes rocky with no life. Sometimes we had to walk through snow, glaciers, it was really difficult, so although it's really beautiful you get a threatening moment, a sense of danger. That's where I feel I deal with nature, I want to control it,'' he said.

Asaka said although he could control the material in the kiln, at a certain point the glass's innate properties prevailed.

''I can control the temperature and form - sometimes it works but many times it doesn't work. There is that moment of transition of glass from solid to liquid, I want to capture the moment when it reaches melting point.''

Glassworks creative director Clare Belfrage said Asaka's finely tuned technique meant that if the glass was kept at a heightened temperature for a longer time, it would all resemble the solid base of the work, be half the height, and lose the delicate icicles.

Ms Belfrage said the glassworks' children's holiday program was planned around the exhibition. ''It's called Glassicles - The Ice That Never Melts and we are running it this week and next week,'' she said.

''The teacher takes the kids to the exhibition so they are already connecting to real artworks made by professional artists. They then go and do their own thing. We are not trying to get them to do copies but just connect to a theme. So Masa's work is obviously about nature, it's about ice and very much about the materiality of glass which is why it's called Glassicles.''