My name is Marika Brandt and I work mainly with glass, ceramics and photography. I was born in Finland, but lived in Denmark from 2002 until 2018. I recently located to Portugal, where I am currently doing my masters studies in Glass and Ceramic art & science.

My artistic career started in 1999 when I studied glassblowing at Häme Polytechnic School in Finland. During those three years I was able to learn the traditional Scandinavian style of glassblowing while working and living in the Nuutajärvi Glass Village. 

In 2005 I continued my studies at the Glass and Ceramics school in Bornholm, Denmark.  After my studies on Bornholm, I have been able to develop my technical skills by working as a glassblowing assistant and as a glassblower in different studios as well as a teaching assistant in Haystack school of crafts in 2015 and at the European Glass context in 2008.  

My interest in photography started when I was doing my internship in USA in 2007. I studied in a local evening school in Burlington, VT and learned the basics in the darkroom. I started my studies at Copenhagen film- and photography school in 2010 and got introduced to different genres in the field of photography. Lately I have been focusing on pinhole photography, building my own cameras and to work in the darkroom. From January 2018 until October 2020 I had a collaborative project with an author. In this project we documented our lives  for 1001 days with pictures and writing, and it will become a book in a near future.

In 2016 I received a grant from Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Danish Arts Foundation, which enabled me to take part on an intensive 8-week glassblowing course ‘Cane Ladder’ at Penland School of Crafts (NC, USA) with Claire Kelly, and study Italian techniques Pastarelli, Murini, Retticello and more. During my time in Penland I was able to concentrate on my work in glass, but also got a chance to throw ceramics on a potter’s wheel, a technique I fell in love with immediately. After returning home I continued to learn Ceramics at a local evening school in Denmark and later on 3 months in Barcelona. Before locating to Portugal, I had a Co-working space Where I was able to work with clay more independently. 

Since I started my master studies in Portugal in 2018, my work has been mainly concentrated on glass and ceramics (especially porcelain). I have studied porcelain properties in my thesis work and created recipes that makes the porcelain more suitable for the potter’s wheel while remaining relatively translucent. I produce my own porcelain and use it for my sculpture work and for my production line BrandtArt ( www.brandt-art.com ) My work can be seen in my gallery/showroom at my own studio, which is located in Almada, Portugal.