Kevin and Eileen Gordon, Island girl platter, 1997, blown glass, engraving 

Cultural background:     
My parents, Rish (Patricia) and Alasdair were both born in Scotland

Place of origin:      
I was born in Norway and lived in Scotland for eight years following

Start of migration journey:    
Crieff, Scotland

Place of arrival in Australia:   
Perth, Western Australia

First home in Australia:    
Armadale, WA

Initial employment in Australia:   Pioneer Village, Armadale, WA.
       
Other employment in Australia:   
From 1986 I worked in and out of my parents studio while travelling, working as a jackaroo in Tasmania, at a ski resort and for a year with a sculptor in the southwest

Any glass related objects that you brought with you? And still have?  My family has a small private collection from various sources

Kevin's story

My parents Rish (Patricia) and Alasdair Gordon were both born in Scotland, they studied at Edinburgh Art College and majored in glass engraving in the traditional copper wheel. My father was invited to work in Norway for various glass companies where he and my mother were married; we lived there for about fifteen years where all four children were born. He was then offered a job working for Strathairn Crystal in Crieff Scotland for a further eight years. In 1978, my father was invited to Perth, Western Australia (WA) for their 150th celebration as one of twelve artists, we were subsequently invited to immigrate to Australia.

In 1980 at the age of twelve I arrived in Australia with my parents and brother. I also have two sisters, Eileen who stayed an extra year and studied glass blowing in England, eventually following us out and ended up establishing her own studio in Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. My sister Susan went off to Norway for a few a years and then came over to Australia and moved straight to Melbourne.

I did not start working with glass really until I was eighteen, drifting in and out of my parents' studio since 1986 working for them and doing some travel. At that stage I worked on imported crystal, as there was no access to hand blown glass, doing some of my parents' production pieces. I guess that is what gave me the basics of engraving, which I eventually took to a larger scale. 

I then started to move into architectural glass doing windows and got a niche doing hotels and pub windows and by 1990 this kept me working full time. In 1994, I moved to Melbourne and set up a cold working shop with Eileen. This is where my career began, working and selling to galleries, building up my own ideas and techniques.

In 1998, I decided to return to Perth because I loved living there, the lifestyle, the beaches and friends and I had achieved my aim to establish myself with galleries. At that time there was no glass blowing studio in Perth apart from a primitive furnace at Curtin University, which I had no intentions of getting involved with. I hired Eileen's studio for a month and together with Scott Chaseling blew about 150 blank pieces, which I spent a week carefully loading into a trailer and ute and drove across the Nullarbor.

When I initially left Perth I had to leave behind my sandblaster, I gave it to Rod Coleman who continued any work that came through. When I returned he had just bought a 6-acre property in Banjup and we spent a few months building a studio there. This has since been my main studio but I have continued to use my parents' studio because of their tools and equipment. Rod helped me with a few large commissions that came through whilst I was in the east so I established a good relationship with him. David Hay turned up from England about a year later and we started to establish the glass blowing studio at Edith Cowan University and have since had a close working relationship. 

My family has had strong influences in the glass community in WA particularly among emerging artists. Basically, a lot of their cold working and sandblasting techniques can only have stemmed from us, the Gordons. We work very closely over here because we are such a small community. Because our assistants are trying to make a living and we cannot employ them full time we encourage and help them to advance their work.

My memories of immigrating to Australia was excitement, at the age of twelve I really knew nothing except a few episodes of Skippy that I had seen on television. Having already immigrated from Norway to Scotland, I think I was very relaxed about it all and accepted whatever was to come.