Cooper Hewitt says...
Mieke Groot studied at the Jewelry and Glass Department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam from 1969-1976. In 1976, she and Richard Meitner co-founded the General Glass Studio. Her glass work has been exhibited widely and is part of numerous public collections in Europe, Asia, and North America, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY. She has taught in France, Belgium, Great Britain, and Canada. From 1996-2006, she was the curator of the private Glass Museum Alter Hof Herding in Coesfeld-Lette, Germany, and since 2009, she has been the artistic director of North Lands Creative Glass, Caithness, Scotland.
She is best known for her blown and enameled glass pieces, many characterized by a ‘skin,’ which she achieves by applying many layers of enamel, mixed with sand, to her blown glass forms. Jewelry has become a prominent part of her work in the last few years. Since the early 1990s, she has traveled extensively in West Africa. Groot has a permanent base in Senegal, on the Island Goree, off the coast of Dakar. There, she often works with a local craftsman, making metal beads for her jewelry.
