Cosmic Connections - Beautiful Blues

Phillip Murray Bandura is a Canadian glass artist whose practice explores the intersections of craft, joy, and the pursuit of connection through material transformation. A founding member of the Bee Kingdom collective (2005–2020) and a graduate of the Alberta University of the Arts MFA program, Bandura’s work merges humour, sensuality, and technical precision. His approach to glass is both playful and reflective—using colour, form, and light to question systems of value, identity, and belonging.
Cosmic Connections continues Bandura’s investigation into the emotional and symbolic potential of glass. Each blown vessel features a deliberate point of contact—where two sides of the form gently pinch together, creating a tactile and visual moment of union. These touchpoints evoke intimacy and the unseen forces that draw people, energies, and celestial bodies together. The two-toned transparent hues, wrapped in candy-like opaque stripes, suggest a sense of pleasure, temptation, and the sweet gravity of attraction.
Through their luminous surfaces and sensual curves, these objects operate as metaphors for human connection—fragile, reflective, and always in motion. Bandura’s use of radiant colour and crafted precision transforms glass into a language of tenderness and tension, inviting viewers to consider how desire, gravity, and care shape the ways we hold and are held by others. In Cosmic Connections, the vessel becomes both a body and a cosmos—a site of encounter that glows with the potential for touch, reflection, and shared transformation.