When he talks about glass, Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert seems inhabited. He evokes a carnal and passionate relationship for a material "considered as a living being", with which he has interacted for two decades. However, his discovery was brutal, as he seriously injured his hand and arm on his edge at the age of 5, before he began to nurture a true obsession. Growing up in Africa, he only learned about the profession of glassblower in the United States, where he was initiated, and then in Murano.
"Cosmic evidence"
His future journey then appears to him as "cosmic evidence". He reads a lot of Taoist philosophy and listens to "emotional" music in the workshop. "It aligns me with the feelings I have and what the material might send back to me. We are all made up of liquid and in a constantly moving state. However, glass is totally fascinating as a hot element, which moves and gives off light, with no other source than itself. Its transparency is also mystical, and when I work it in fusion, I have the impression of crystallizing a global emotion. After more autobiographical and memory-related research during his first years of practice, Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert gradually freed himself. He then designed lights, which led him to the clouds, to the sky, to the cosmos, then to the Big Bang and to the work The Beginning: Dark Matter, for which he received the Liliane Bettencourt prize for the intelligence of la main-Talents d'exception 2019. The glassblower is also passionate about defending his status as an artisan and claims the creativity of the hand, which tends to be lost in favor of the concept. For his own cause, he does not hesitate to train a number of apprentices and to dialogue with those who want it, before plunging back into the heart of the matter.