Chris Wood studied three-dimensional design and furniture at Middlesex Polytechnic before earning a master’s degree in glass from the Royal College of Art. Her interest in treating light as an artistic material began during her furniture studies and expanded through architectural-scale investigations of light and space.
Wood first encountered dichroic glass in the late 1980s, although it took nearly a decade of experimentation to establish the distinctive approach that now defines her practice. After relocating to the flat agricultural landscape of East Anglia in 2000, she became interested in the orderly repetition of cultivated fields. Their precise rows inspired the mathematical structures through which she allows reflected light and color to behave unpredictably.
Her career spans more than 25 years, with exhibitions and installations presented throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. Wood founded Chris Wood Light Studio in 2015, and her work is held by the Shanghai Museum of Glass as well as private collections worldwide. Her expansive architectural installation Light Wall, composed of more than 2,500 dichroic glass fins, received the Best in Creativity award at Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture Public Art Awards in 2022. In 2026, the Maraya Art Centre presented Liquid Light, her first institutional solo exhibition in the United Arab Emirates.
