Nicole Ayliffe investigates the ability of glass to refract and reflect light by combining photographic images and drawings with specially developed glass forms.  In her “optical landscape” photographic series, the landscape images are embedded into a gel medium within the glass piece which acts as a lens.  In other work, Nicole draws onto the glass surface with coloured ‘stringers’, or etches designs onto the side of the piece which become ethereal visions when viewed through differing angles.  These designs are etched onto the glass both through sandblasting and cutting on the lathe.  In Nicole's most recent work, patterns inspired by her childhood engage with the qualities of transparency and distortion to suggest the hazy realm of memory and imagination.  "The rectangular forms act as a fragment or segments of the past, framed within a three dimensional space, which when placed together read as a story of captured moments."

Nicole Ayliffe graduated in 2005 from the South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia, completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) majoring in glass and photography.  In 2004, she was selected for the Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition and received a High Commendation for the Adelaide City Council Award.  During the course of her studies, Nicole also won the Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Society Art Prize, received a High Commendation from the Glass Art Society Award, received a Bullseye scholarship (fused glass workshop, JamFactory), and was a finalist in the Ranamok Glass Prize.  Nicole’s work is represented in the National Glass Collection, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, NSW and the College of Fine Arts, Northeast University, Changchun, China.