ARTS graduate Dawn Cunliffe has been winning praise for an exhibit featuring tear-shaped glass inspired by her correspondence with a prisoner on Death Row in Texas.

Dawn, who recently gained a Visual Arts degree from Bolton Institute, came up with the Glass and Light installation after being moved by the plight of 23-year-old Yokamon Hearn.

Hearn is facing the death penalty since being convincted in 1998 of murdering student Frank Menziere, allegedly for his car, but has always maintained his innocence.

Twenty-two years-old Dawn began writing to Hearn -- nicknamed Yogi -- after seeing an advert in the Big Issue asking for penpals for Death Row prisoners.

She says Hearn is now a committed Christian with amazing faith.

In perspective

"He's always so encouraging and strong about things. When I hear him talk about his circumstances it really puts things in perspective," she said.

Thousands of people have seen Glass and Light, which consists of 42 small pieces of glass put in tear-shaped layers in a spiral and illuminated from below, at the Soul Survivor Christian music and arts festival in Gloucestershire over the last few weeks.

Dawn, of Fallowfield Way, Atherton, said: "The festival site is a very busy place and plenty of people visited the installation. The feedback I had was that people thought it was very tranquil and spiritual."

She now has the chance of her work being featured at an exhibition in London as part of the Survivor In The City event, an offshoot of Soul Survivor.