State Library a new creative hub for artisan’s craft and design community

Through her jewellery designs and sculpture, Ebony Birks tells stories inspired by her Dunghutti and Kamilaroi heritage, connecting the past to present.  

Celebrating artisan’s new home in the heart of Queensland Cultural Centre, the emerging Brisbane designer said it was inspiring to share a space with storytellers of all disciplines.  

‘This new location here at the State Library of Queensland is a big deal,’ Ebony told the crowd at the announcement of State Library’s partnership with artisan, a cultural social enterprise that champions craft and design talent across Queensland. 

‘With over 1.5 million visitors each year, this is an audience that is already engaged with culture, with stories, with ideas. It’s a space where our work isn’t hidden away, it's part of a larger conversation. 

‘It means Queensland makers have a permanent and visible home in one of the most significant cultural precincts in the state. And that matters. Because our work deserves to be seen. It deserves to be valued. And it deserves to exist in spaces like this.’ 

Ebony set up EB Studio in 2020 amid the global uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Crafting made-to-order contemporary jewellery from recycled precious metals, she built a following and expanded into sculpture. 

Ebony was awarded a significant public art project in Sydney and exhibited as a finalist in artisan’s UNLEASHED Emerging Biennale in 2024. Artisan’s professional development and advice has helped her build a creative business while working another full-time job. 

‘I’ve spent the last 6 years building on my skills and growing my business – mind you, having absolutely no idea how to do this,’ Ebony said. 

‘Building a creative practice isn’t just about making. As much as I’d love to hide away in my studio and just make, it’s also about running a business. Answering emails, sending invoices (following up invoices), pricing your work (having the confidence to price your work) and trying to keep up with social media trends.  

‘You’re constantly balancing creativity with sustainability, and trying to protect the part of your practice that made you start in the first place. 

‘When things get tough, the arts are often the first thing people stop spending money on. And as a maker, that can really test your motivation and confidence. 

‘That’s why socio-cultural enterprises like artisan are so important. They don’t just provide a place to sell work, they provide visibility, validation and real support for artists and makers. They help bridge that gap between making something meaningful and actually being able to sustain a career from it.’ 

‘Creativity belongs to everyone’ 

State Librarian and CEO Vicki McDonald AM FALIA welcomed artisan to their new headquarters: ‘We think this is the perfect home for lovers of design.’ 

‘State Library’s vision is to be a library of influence – inspiring and connecting people through knowledge, storytelling and creativity. At its heart, the partnership with artisan is about our shared belief that creativity belongs to everyone.  

‘With our public library partners, we’re excited to support artisan’s collaborations with makers and designers right across Queensland.’ 

State Library will host MADE2026, a cross-sector symposium for craft leaders and practitioners from across Australia. 

Artisan CEO Carmel Haugh said through the partnership, craft and design was stepping into the centre of public life. 

‘Queensland’s makers are quietly building something significant. In studios and workshops across Queensland from regional and remote towns to urban spaces, they are creating work of genuine cultural and economic consequence,’ she said. 

‘They aren’t always visible and they don’t always have the loudest voice in the room. This is where artisan comes in. Our job – our privilege – is to make sure the rest of the world gets to see it.’ 

Meet two of the other talented Queensland creatives making their mark in the artisan community.

Jarred Wright: science meets art  

In his day job as a scientific glass blower, Jarred Wright  is surrounded by an art installation – screens of old flasks and tubes he collected from university laboratories and clamped onto metal stands. 

The New Zealand-born glass artist studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts, focusing on sculpture, print, ceramics, fine metals and glass. After managing workshops on his world travels, he landed in Brisbane and answered an ad for a traineeship at The University of Queensland School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences.  

‘It's now 16 years later and I'm now both the manager and sole worker of the last university-owned glassblowing facility in Australia,’ he says.  

One of his assemblages of obsolete lab glassware at is part of Museum of Brisbane’s Precious exhibition, which celebrates prolific collectors and their curiosities.  

Jarred takes inspiration from organic science for his art, which he creates in his home workshop using traditional bench torch glass-blowing techniques. He was one of 5 outstanding artists featured in artisan’s Queensland Contemporary Glass show in 2025.  

‘Artisan has been so supportive in my arts practice,’ he says. ‘They have given me a platform to exhibit bodies of experimental work more than once, and this is when I really shine. I have made some incredible contacts and gained further opportunities from the exposure that those shows provided.’ 

Jarred's Blobject vases, Cell Culture lamps and other quirky sculptures mimic microscopic organisms. Other works range from glass sets to hammer and nail wall hangings, and bird and spider sculptures.  

‘My artistic practice is driven by experimentation and a desire to test material and conceptual limits and ultimately make things that people haven't seen before,’ Jarred says. ‘This approach often pushes me to test the boundaries of glass as well as leading me to engage with other materials, techniques and formats as ideas evolve.’ 

Raquel Vieira Diniz: connection at heart  

Growing up in Lisbon, sculptor and ceramic artist Raquel Vieira Diniz loved wandering through museums and galleries.  

It was in the sculpture-filled gardens of a museum where she found her greatest inspiration: the modernist landscape design of Portugal’s Calouste Gulbenkian Museum.  

‘Looking back, I realise that my fascination with sculpture probably began in those gardens, where the wild botanica of the world was carefully arranged, trimmed, and disciplined into dialogue with art and architecture,’ she says.  

Raquel went on to study sculpture at the University of Lisbon, where she honed her skill for ‘distilling human or organic qualities into materials that might seem heavy, rigid or unyielding’, such as plaster, concrete and resin.  

Although she had worked extensively with clay, Raquel had not fired it before emigrating to Australia in 2019.   

Brisbane’s ceramics community offered a bridge across cultures, and the playful organic shapes of Raquel’s unique small sculptural objects captured attention.   

Her work was exhibited as a finalist in the 2025 Siliceous Award for Ceramic Excellence and she was one of 12 Queensland ceramicists whose work featured in ODE - to Gwyn, a 2025 artisan exhibition that paid tribute to distinguished ceramicist Gwyn Hanssen Pigott OAM (1935–2013).  

Artisan has offered encouragement for Raquel as well as invaluable advice on the business aspects of being a creative. She says having work on display in the Library Shop means exposure to a wider audience who might not normally visit a gallery but appreciate art: ‘The library is a place where you can get a lot more people, a lot of different sorts of people. I hope they’re going to be happily surprised.’  

Raquel coordinates community art projects, workshops in schools and kindergartens, and art therapy sessions for neurodiverse children. A believer in the social and transformative power of art, she says teaching and making are interwoven practices. ‘Both require patience, openness, and a willingness to discover alongside others. Both are, at heart, about connection.’   

Keep an eye on our What’s On page for an exciting mix of artisan workshops, masterclasses and seminars starting from April.  

More to explore for lovers of design

Shop artisan in the Library Shop or online 

The Edge make and design hub 

Asia Pacific Design Library: level 2 

Australian Library of Art: level 4