Co-founder of the National Sculpture Factory, Cork, Maud Cotter’s early reputation was established as a stained-glass artist. Cotter sought to redress the decorative and religious stereotypes that tended to preclude this medium’s acceptance as a fine art discipline. A visit to Iceland in 1991 precipitated a renewed interest in sculptural practice which she has pursued exclusively since then, working with such diverse media as steel, glass, perspex, cardboard, wax and latex. Underlying this work is a group of related concepts which focuses upon the reciprocal relationship between the body and the structures we build around it. The honeycomb forms and materials that Cotter uses set up associations between inside and outside, between our bodies and minds. Cotter states: “…within these pieces lies a remembrance of the ordinary, spaces that cushion the everyday and intervene between our flesh and outer things.”* *Quotation from exhibition catalogue ‘Also: Maud Cotter’ by Sarah Glennie, West Cork Arts Centre, Cork, 2002, p 4.