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“我可以从所以的旅行中汲取灵感，不论是东方西方、南部北部。但是从泻湖到威尼斯的一路游览却能给我带来前所未有的满足感。泻湖区有蔗田、沼泽，城市到处弥漫着历史感，古老的砖瓦、雕塑、多层建筑⋯⋯蔚为壮观，都能给我带来灵感大爆发。”－玻璃艺术家 Lucio Bubacco 如是说 。
1.ZEST:是什么样的机缘让你开始专注于玻璃艺术的 ？
Lucio Bubacco :这个问题的答案实在很多，如果我们谈论玻璃，我想这源于我的原始驱动力。我在Murano出生，于是我制作玻璃雕塑。如果我在山区出生，我会从事木雕艺术，如果我在 Carrara出生，我会成为大理石雕刻家。这是个出身的问题，我初次与玻璃为伍的时候还是个孩子。（Murano:意大利城市，盛产玻璃艺术品；Carrara:意大利城市，盛产大理石。－ 编者注 ）
ZEST: where is your beginning ofthese fantastic glass art.
Lucio Bubacco :There are too many answers for this question. If we talk about glass, you know it is my origin. I was born in Murano and I make glass sculptures. If i was born in montain, i would be a wood sculptor, if i was born in Carrara, i would be a marble sculptor. It's my origin, when I was child i started to work with glass.
2. ZEST:说说你的创作主题？
Lucio Bubacco :我创作的核心主题是个人的生活经历，作品就是我本人的镜子。我制作这些形象化的雕塑，而个人的经历往往灌注其中。技术是实现各种构思的前提，就我而言，如果没有技术也就没有构思。
ZEST: please talk about the central theme of your work?
Lucio Bubacco :The central theme of my work is my life experience, my work is the mirrow of myself. I make figurative sculptures and inside them there are personal experience. Thecnique allows to materialize a thought. In my case, if there isn't tecnique there isnt thought.
3. ZEST: 一般来说你如何完成你的作品？有哪些有趣体验可以分享的？
Lucio Bubacco :我的画廊总监（ Litvak画廊）来我的工作室，看到一些情境的作品，就问我是否有一些神秘梦境。我回答说：“可不止只一个呢！”之后他说：“很好！加油啊！我会协助你实现它的”。夜深人静时，一个画面在我睡梦中展现，一年后，我已经将它实现了一半，没有谁能拒绝如此永恒的诱惑。
ZEST:Generally, how do you complete your work(from idea to finished) ? Is there any interesting experience to share?
Lucio Bubacco :My gallery director (Litvak Gallery), is coming in my studio. He saw some operas, he asked me if i had a secret dream. I said: “ Yes more than one!” and he said: “ good, go head! I'll help you to get it!” During a night a drawing my dream in and after one year and a half my work was finished: Eternal Temptation.
4. ZEST: 你完成作品的过程中最关键的是什么？
Lucio Bubacco :技术是最重要的环节，只要有技术基础我就能完全不打折扣的实现我的构思。
ZEST:What's the most important thing when you creating ?
Lucio Bubacco :Tecnique is the most important thing. With technique i may materialize competely my throught, without compromises.
5. ZEST: 有人说吃什么，像什么，你怎么看这句话 ？
Lucio Bubacco :我完全同意！在艺术史上，健美的身体都会被神化。要想有一副这样的身躯就必须要注重饮食！我制作了一些称为“Baccanali”（意大利语中“酒神节”之意－编者注）的作品，它们代表了舞动着的形体。它们就是神话。一般来说，我创造的人物形象都有很好的形体与经典的模特原形。
ZEST:Someone said that you are what you eat,what do you think about it?
Lucio Bubacco :I absolutely agree! In the history of art healthy body was being mythologized. To have a beautiful body to have to eat good! I made some works called “Baccanali” they represent a dancing bodies. They are a Myths. Generally all my figures have nice physicist, they have a classic model.
6. ZEST: 想像与创新对你来说意味着什么 ？你觉得它们如何影响我们的生活？
Lucio Bubacco :我的出发点是非常原始而古老的，我钟情于那个人们用双手创造生活的世界。这个线索看起来非常遥远，但我作品里的情境却是极端现代的。因为现在事物都瞬息万变，艺术家也同样逃脱不了这个大背景，很少有人能抵抗这个现实。我们从出生的一刻起就开始逐渐衰老，与之同理，艺术品从被完成的一刻起就走向陈旧。但我的作品却能历久弥新，因为它们不会衰老。
ZEST:what does imagination and innovation mean to you and how does it affect our life in your mind?
Lucio Bubacco :The origin of my aspiration are ancient, when people worked with hands. I'm attracted by that world. That points seem very far but my operas are extremely contemporary because a lot of things today change day by day, also artists change day by day, few of them resist. Now we are already old after we are born like an art work are old after it is finished. My pieces are contemporary because they can't be old.
7. ZEST: 对你来说甚么是好的艺术品 ？
Lucio Bubacco :关于艺术品的界定有很多不同的观念。我想其中必须的存在是情感内涵与吸引力，所有的一切都灌注在情感之中了。
ZEST:What is good photographic work?
Lucio Bubacco :They are a lot of different opinions about an art work. I think one is: it has to give emotions, it has to attract you. Inside the emotion there is all.
8.你喜欢哪些艺术家？
Lucio Bubacco :我喜欢的艺术家都生活在2000年到3000年之前，艺术品还在，创作者却早已灰飞烟灭了，但我想作品才是重点所在。我的灵感来源多是那些古老的艺术，但对当代作品也怀有足够的尊重与好奇。我喜欢的艺术家很多,他们有些生活在中世纪，有些是在文艺复兴时期，还有些是当代艺术家。领域也不同，从绘画到雕刻，总体来说我倾心于那些技巧很高的艺术家。
ZEST:Give us some names of the artist you like.
Lucio Bubacco :Artists i like lived from 3000 to 2000 years ago.art works are remain the name are lost. It isn't the sign the important thing but the work that was realized. My inspirations are those, but i have respect and a lot of curiosity about the contemporary art. There are a lot of artists that i love, mediaeval artists, renaissance artists, contemporary artists, from the painting to the sculpture. Generally i am attracted by a good technicianl artists.
9.你时常旅行，最能激发灵感的目的地是甚么样的地方？
Lucio Bubacco :我可以从所以的旅行中汲取灵感，不论是东方西方、南部北部。但是从泻湖到威尼斯的一路游览却能给我带来前所未有的满足感。泻湖区有蔗田、沼泽，城市到处弥漫着历史感，古老的砖瓦、雕塑、多层建筑⋯⋯蔚为壮观，都能给我带来灵感大爆发。
ZEST: talk about the travel you can not forget, and how about the inspiration during them .
Lucio Bubacco :I take inspirations in all my trips, from the Orient to the Occident, from the North to the South. But when i do a little trip in my lagoon, from lagoon to the city of Venice i have an impact that give me satisfaction like no place in the world. The lagoon has cane fields, saltmarsh, the city has History, ancient bricks, sculptures, architectures, much floors one up the other. Magnificent. My inspiration explode.
10. ZEST: 下一步的打算是？
Lucio Bubacco :我想尽可能简化不必要的，这是一个开启新冒险的关键时点。我要关照到创作的核心，其中应该涉及技术和我的个人风格。这会是一个大的转折点。
ZEST:What is your next step?
Lucio Bubacco :I want to simplify the unnecessary . The time to start a new adventure. To take care about the main, it is possible to respect technique and didactis of my route. It will be a huge change.
Bubacco, born on Murano in 1957, began playing with glass as a boy, making small animals, beads, and the usual lampworker's tablet. At fifteen he received his artisan's license and began marketing flameworked Venetian memorabilia. His fascination with anatomy, equine and human, lured him to push bit by bit beyond the perceived technical limits of his craft. His large free standing sculpture, worked hot and annealed during the process, is unique in lampworking made from flexible Murano soda glass canes, not less-breakable Pyrex. His pieces challenge our notion of lampwork as a primarily decorative and whimsical, stressing as they do form and plasticity, rather than detailed elaboration and/or narrative content presented as a mini-installation. Bubacco's recent explorations with two dimensional inclusions in blown, solid off-hand and cast glass, burst forth into three dimensional glory, or are highlighted by cold working through and around the images, as he persists in his quest to create a living force in glass.
In 1980 he began studying anatomical drawing with the Venetian artist Alessandro Rossi. His style takes on a new dimension: the movement of the figure becomes the central theme of his work.
His masterpieces are crafted in Murano glass, also called "soft glass" because of its high soda content, which is famous for its characteristic brightness and ideal for the "lume" process.
His technical experience and knowledge of glass color compatibility allow him to create unique works: figures entirely hand-formed and incorporated in blown-vases or in casting. His works transcend traditional uses and conceptions of the "lume" technique. They collocate motive tensions and plasticity in a context of narrative surrealism, to create highly original pieces derived from his personal sensibility.
Lucio Bubacco's sensuous works combine the anatomic perfection of Greek sculpture with the Byzantine gothic architecture of his native Venice. Seductive themes, metamorphosis and transformation, forms emerging from the void, echo themes from our mythological past when sexuality was spiritual, not political.
I wander through his studio on Murano, a different sort of workshop than the furnaces we are used to on the island. I instantly realize that it is important to him to conceive his workspace in his own image, the result of his many travels around the world and his exchanges with other artists, Lucio Bubacco is one of those people that sparks your interest from the very beginning, he stands out in the context of Murano. Lampwork is actually only a means for him, and his works have demonstrated the need to transcend every traditional concept this technique embodies on Murano. I am interested in understanding his professional and artistic past.
Tell me how you got started how you discovered glass.
I was born in 1957, and in the early Seventies I started to visit furnaces which belonged to my father's friends, though I mostly played around. But my basis remains lampwork (I used to heat glass for a craftsman). My father Severino Bubacco, a somewhat famous glassmaster who travelled the world for work, gave me the opportunity when I was a teenager to join him in France and America: that's when I realized what was happening outside our country the ideas and the different approaches to glass. I was able to show my work, but it was mostly commercial stuff. Only Murano could give me the proper technical preparation. Simultaneously I attempted to cultivate my other passion which was drawing.
But what was the atmosphere like in Murano in those years, especially in the field of lamp-work?
Very few of us had our own businesses, and the older ones were firmly established. When I completed my military service, I opened my first store, then a workshop with Emilio Santini who later moved to the United States. That's when I opened a boutique in Venice and only then did I start to interact with a wider range of people, and develop my work.
What type of work did you do?
At first I made animals in different shapes and sizes. But at the same time I wanted to pursue an idea which was technically almost impossible. To eliminate the defects in figures, in the human body is a very slow process. Art school students want quick results, but it takes a lot of practice to shape details in glass.
This is why you needed drawing, as you said earlier...
That's right. Of the courses I took, one was with Alessandro Rossi, and it proved extremely useful in transferring what I observed through drawing with a pencil into shaping the same things in glass. For example: a borses leg, whose bone structure is divided in three parts plus the hoof and not two like most of the masters do. It also important to have natural talent. In any case, drawing is very helpful. Technique is also important, because in lampwork a very high flame allows you more freedom to work on details.
What is the genesis of your world where the human figure and movement become the central theme of your work?
Even as a child I was attracted by history, by the images of soldiers and costume-clad figures whose forms derived from classical Greek Roman and Byzantine art. Butyou bave to shift your focus, and my first form of expression were not in glass as you see it now in my works. I went through phases dedicated to painting, to clay, even to making molds for masks. And for quite a long time I displayed a variety of different things in my store-window in Sant'Aponal in Venice in order to earn a living. But I was always more interested in glass form than color. To be able to extract a iife out of a glass rod.
When did you take the giant step towards solo exhibitions?
At the end of the Eighties an American woman saw some glass compositions in my store; she showed several pieces to art galleries, and created an interest for them in the United States. One of these galleries is Habitat to which I am very attached.
I travelled there for two months, then I went to Japan. Impact with the outside world proved essential; I earnd not only technical, but artistic and conceptual appreciation as well. My stay at Wheaton Villane, a historic furnace in New Jersey where the greatest of international artists have come to work, proved fundamental. I experimented with new fusions thanks to the equipment they made available.
And so you progressed towards unexplored hotizons from a compositional point of view?
Obviously the innovations created by mixing colors and fusions were achievements which I would explore in a personal manner each time I returned home to Murano. I have always done thing gradually.
I collaborated wiht several furnaces for my applications (of figures on vessels or plates) and for technical problems, such as welding one piece to another in the architecture of my more complex pieces. Today I have invested even more by personally acquiring new equipment, annealing ovens and electric kilns to create as much as possible in my own studio, and to be more secure in my own technique.
What is your idea of the furnace?
The furnace is a world which has always fascinated me, the furnace is volume, lampwork is nothing in comparison. But my work is what I have inside and the furnace is the framework I need to give value to this content. In my works the vase, the glass, the panels are simply the background and the suspended figures are the fulcrum of my work whose vitality remains undiminished.
At the moment lamp-work does not really have an artistic reputation, it still needs the furnace like a raw, crude or primitive flow which bolds together something more refined, elements in motion, details, etc. I used to use bright colors, lately I have discovered that black is able to express the strength and energy of imagination much better: Ivory is beautiful too, but it isfragile to work with.
Lampwork is fascinating territory in the greater world of glass art.
Its unique technical and aesthetic opportunities command the attention of a growing number of artists and appreciators around the globe.
Every method of manipulating glass-whether "hot," "warm" or "cold"-brings out a different aspect of this amazing material. While lampworking shares some methods with other hot techniques, it is set apart by the primary use of a focused, directional heat source: the torch flame.
This makes a unique vocabulary of techniques available for detailed work.
It also lends itself to the assembly of component pieces into larger objects. Artists using this technique are therefore challenged to make the best use of this quality, or to transcend it in an internal aesthetic confrontation.
Lampwork has an ongoing relationship with science, more so than other glass fields.
The first microscope lenses were formed by lampworking, and countless crucial developments in chemistry, physics and other sciences have depended on apparatus made of lampworked glass. The techniques and vocabulary of science are therefore more familiar to branches of lampwork, and some lampworked glass can be seen as a dialogue between art and science.
Lampworking is also "contemporary" in its encouragement of an individual approach to the medium.
Although lampworkers can and do work together, the typical studio is a one-person operation. This gives free reign to the individual's creative inspiration and the development of a personal language. And while lampworking can be and is a spontaneous process, it also affords the artist an opportunity to readjust the form, to refine the embodiment of his inspiration, in a way that other hot glass forming methods do not.
1.ZEST:是什么样的机缘让你开始专注于玻璃艺术的 ？
Lucio Bubacco :这个问题的答案实在很多，如果我们谈论玻璃，我想这源于我的原始驱动力。我在Murano出生，于是我制作玻璃雕塑。如果我在山区出生，我会从事木雕艺术，如果我在 Carrara出生，我会成为大理石雕刻家。这是个出身的问题，我初次与玻璃为伍的时候还是个孩子。（Murano:意大利城市，盛产玻璃艺术品；Carrara:意大利城市，盛产大理石。－ 编者注 ）
ZEST: where is your beginning ofthese fantastic glass art.
Lucio Bubacco :There are too many answers for this question. If we talk about glass, you know it is my origin. I was born in Murano and I make glass sculptures. If i was born in montain, i would be a wood sculptor, if i was born in Carrara, i would be a marble sculptor. It's my origin, when I was child i started to work with glass.
2. ZEST:说说你的创作主题？
Lucio Bubacco :我创作的核心主题是个人的生活经历，作品就是我本人的镜子。我制作这些形象化的雕塑，而个人的经历往往灌注其中。技术是实现各种构思的前提，就我而言，如果没有技术也就没有构思。
ZEST: please talk about the central theme of your work?
Lucio Bubacco :The central theme of my work is my life experience, my work is the mirrow of myself. I make figurative sculptures and inside them there are personal experience. Thecnique allows to materialize a thought. In my case, if there isn't tecnique there isnt thought.
3. ZEST: 一般来说你如何完成你的作品？有哪些有趣体验可以分享的？
Lucio Bubacco :我的画廊总监（ Litvak画廊）来我的工作室，看到一些情境的作品，就问我是否有一些神秘梦境。我回答说：“可不止只一个呢！”之后他说：“很好！加油啊！我会协助你实现它的”。夜深人静时，一个画面在我睡梦中展现，一年后，我已经将它实现了一半，没有谁能拒绝如此永恒的诱惑。
ZEST:Generally, how do you complete your work(from idea to finished) ? Is there any interesting experience to share?
Lucio Bubacco :My gallery director (Litvak Gallery), is coming in my studio. He saw some operas, he asked me if i had a secret dream. I said: “ Yes more than one!” and he said: “ good, go head! I'll help you to get it!” During a night a drawing my dream in and after one year and a half my work was finished: Eternal Temptation.
4. ZEST: 你完成作品的过程中最关键的是什么？
Lucio Bubacco :技术是最重要的环节，只要有技术基础我就能完全不打折扣的实现我的构思。
ZEST:What's the most important thing when you creating ?
Lucio Bubacco :Tecnique is the most important thing. With technique i may materialize competely my throught, without compromises.
5. ZEST: 有人说吃什么，像什么，你怎么看这句话 ？
Lucio Bubacco :我完全同意！在艺术史上，健美的身体都会被神化。要想有一副这样的身躯就必须要注重饮食！我制作了一些称为“Baccanali”（意大利语中“酒神节”之意－编者注）的作品，它们代表了舞动着的形体。它们就是神话。一般来说，我创造的人物形象都有很好的形体与经典的模特原形。
ZEST:Someone said that you are what you eat,what do you think about it?
Lucio Bubacco :I absolutely agree! In the history of art healthy body was being mythologized. To have a beautiful body to have to eat good! I made some works called “Baccanali” they represent a dancing bodies. They are a Myths. Generally all my figures have nice physicist, they have a classic model.
6. ZEST: 想像与创新对你来说意味着什么 ？你觉得它们如何影响我们的生活？
Lucio Bubacco :我的出发点是非常原始而古老的，我钟情于那个人们用双手创造生活的世界。这个线索看起来非常遥远，但我作品里的情境却是极端现代的。因为现在事物都瞬息万变，艺术家也同样逃脱不了这个大背景，很少有人能抵抗这个现实。我们从出生的一刻起就开始逐渐衰老，与之同理，艺术品从被完成的一刻起就走向陈旧。但我的作品却能历久弥新，因为它们不会衰老。
ZEST:what does imagination and innovation mean to you and how does it affect our life in your mind?
Lucio Bubacco :The origin of my aspiration are ancient, when people worked with hands. I'm attracted by that world. That points seem very far but my operas are extremely contemporary because a lot of things today change day by day, also artists change day by day, few of them resist. Now we are already old after we are born like an art work are old after it is finished. My pieces are contemporary because they can't be old.
7. ZEST: 对你来说甚么是好的艺术品 ？
Lucio Bubacco :关于艺术品的界定有很多不同的观念。我想其中必须的存在是情感内涵与吸引力，所有的一切都灌注在情感之中了。
ZEST:What is good photographic work?
Lucio Bubacco :They are a lot of different opinions about an art work. I think one is: it has to give emotions, it has to attract you. Inside the emotion there is all.
8.你喜欢哪些艺术家？
Lucio Bubacco :我喜欢的艺术家都生活在2000年到3000年之前，艺术品还在，创作者却早已灰飞烟灭了，但我想作品才是重点所在。我的灵感来源多是那些古老的艺术，但对当代作品也怀有足够的尊重与好奇。我喜欢的艺术家很多,他们有些生活在中世纪，有些是在文艺复兴时期，还有些是当代艺术家。领域也不同，从绘画到雕刻，总体来说我倾心于那些技巧很高的艺术家。
ZEST:Give us some names of the artist you like.
Lucio Bubacco :Artists i like lived from 3000 to 2000 years ago.art works are remain the name are lost. It isn't the sign the important thing but the work that was realized. My inspirations are those, but i have respect and a lot of curiosity about the contemporary art. There are a lot of artists that i love, mediaeval artists, renaissance artists, contemporary artists, from the painting to the sculpture. Generally i am attracted by a good technicianl artists.
9.你时常旅行，最能激发灵感的目的地是甚么样的地方？
Lucio Bubacco :我可以从所以的旅行中汲取灵感，不论是东方西方、南部北部。但是从泻湖到威尼斯的一路游览却能给我带来前所未有的满足感。泻湖区有蔗田、沼泽，城市到处弥漫着历史感，古老的砖瓦、雕塑、多层建筑⋯⋯蔚为壮观，都能给我带来灵感大爆发。
ZEST: talk about the travel you can not forget, and how about the inspiration during them .
Lucio Bubacco :I take inspirations in all my trips, from the Orient to the Occident, from the North to the South. But when i do a little trip in my lagoon, from lagoon to the city of Venice i have an impact that give me satisfaction like no place in the world. The lagoon has cane fields, saltmarsh, the city has History, ancient bricks, sculptures, architectures, much floors one up the other. Magnificent. My inspiration explode.
10. ZEST: 下一步的打算是？
Lucio Bubacco :我想尽可能简化不必要的，这是一个开启新冒险的关键时点。我要关照到创作的核心，其中应该涉及技术和我的个人风格。这会是一个大的转折点。
ZEST:What is your next step?
Lucio Bubacco :I want to simplify the unnecessary . The time to start a new adventure. To take care about the main, it is possible to respect technique and didactis of my route. It will be a huge change.
Bubacco, born on Murano in 1957, began playing with glass as a boy, making small animals, beads, and the usual lampworker's tablet. At fifteen he received his artisan's license and began marketing flameworked Venetian memorabilia. His fascination with anatomy, equine and human, lured him to push bit by bit beyond the perceived technical limits of his craft. His large free standing sculpture, worked hot and annealed during the process, is unique in lampworking made from flexible Murano soda glass canes, not less-breakable Pyrex. His pieces challenge our notion of lampwork as a primarily decorative and whimsical, stressing as they do form and plasticity, rather than detailed elaboration and/or narrative content presented as a mini-installation. Bubacco's recent explorations with two dimensional inclusions in blown, solid off-hand and cast glass, burst forth into three dimensional glory, or are highlighted by cold working through and around the images, as he persists in his quest to create a living force in glass.
In 1980 he began studying anatomical drawing with the Venetian artist Alessandro Rossi. His style takes on a new dimension: the movement of the figure becomes the central theme of his work.
His masterpieces are crafted in Murano glass, also called "soft glass" because of its high soda content, which is famous for its characteristic brightness and ideal for the "lume" process.
His technical experience and knowledge of glass color compatibility allow him to create unique works: figures entirely hand-formed and incorporated in blown-vases or in casting. His works transcend traditional uses and conceptions of the "lume" technique. They collocate motive tensions and plasticity in a context of narrative surrealism, to create highly original pieces derived from his personal sensibility.
Lucio Bubacco's sensuous works combine the anatomic perfection of Greek sculpture with the Byzantine gothic architecture of his native Venice. Seductive themes, metamorphosis and transformation, forms emerging from the void, echo themes from our mythological past when sexuality was spiritual, not political.
I wander through his studio on Murano, a different sort of workshop than the furnaces we are used to on the island. I instantly realize that it is important to him to conceive his workspace in his own image, the result of his many travels around the world and his exchanges with other artists, Lucio Bubacco is one of those people that sparks your interest from the very beginning, he stands out in the context of Murano. Lampwork is actually only a means for him, and his works have demonstrated the need to transcend every traditional concept this technique embodies on Murano. I am interested in understanding his professional and artistic past.
Tell me how you got started how you discovered glass.
I was born in 1957, and in the early Seventies I started to visit furnaces which belonged to my father's friends, though I mostly played around. But my basis remains lampwork (I used to heat glass for a craftsman). My father Severino Bubacco, a somewhat famous glassmaster who travelled the world for work, gave me the opportunity when I was a teenager to join him in France and America: that's when I realized what was happening outside our country the ideas and the different approaches to glass. I was able to show my work, but it was mostly commercial stuff. Only Murano could give me the proper technical preparation. Simultaneously I attempted to cultivate my other passion which was drawing.
But what was the atmosphere like in Murano in those years, especially in the field of lamp-work?
Very few of us had our own businesses, and the older ones were firmly established. When I completed my military service, I opened my first store, then a workshop with Emilio Santini who later moved to the United States. That's when I opened a boutique in Venice and only then did I start to interact with a wider range of people, and develop my work.
What type of work did you do?
At first I made animals in different shapes and sizes. But at the same time I wanted to pursue an idea which was technically almost impossible. To eliminate the defects in figures, in the human body is a very slow process. Art school students want quick results, but it takes a lot of practice to shape details in glass.
This is why you needed drawing, as you said earlier...
That's right. Of the courses I took, one was with Alessandro Rossi, and it proved extremely useful in transferring what I observed through drawing with a pencil into shaping the same things in glass. For example: a borses leg, whose bone structure is divided in three parts plus the hoof and not two like most of the masters do. It also important to have natural talent. In any case, drawing is very helpful. Technique is also important, because in lampwork a very high flame allows you more freedom to work on details.
What is the genesis of your world where the human figure and movement become the central theme of your work?
Even as a child I was attracted by history, by the images of soldiers and costume-clad figures whose forms derived from classical Greek Roman and Byzantine art. Butyou bave to shift your focus, and my first form of expression were not in glass as you see it now in my works. I went through phases dedicated to painting, to clay, even to making molds for masks. And for quite a long time I displayed a variety of different things in my store-window in Sant'Aponal in Venice in order to earn a living. But I was always more interested in glass form than color. To be able to extract a iife out of a glass rod.
When did you take the giant step towards solo exhibitions?
At the end of the Eighties an American woman saw some glass compositions in my store; she showed several pieces to art galleries, and created an interest for them in the United States. One of these galleries is Habitat to which I am very attached.
I travelled there for two months, then I went to Japan. Impact with the outside world proved essential; I earnd not only technical, but artistic and conceptual appreciation as well. My stay at Wheaton Villane, a historic furnace in New Jersey where the greatest of international artists have come to work, proved fundamental. I experimented with new fusions thanks to the equipment they made available.
And so you progressed towards unexplored hotizons from a compositional point of view?
Obviously the innovations created by mixing colors and fusions were achievements which I would explore in a personal manner each time I returned home to Murano. I have always done thing gradually.
I collaborated wiht several furnaces for my applications (of figures on vessels or plates) and for technical problems, such as welding one piece to another in the architecture of my more complex pieces. Today I have invested even more by personally acquiring new equipment, annealing ovens and electric kilns to create as much as possible in my own studio, and to be more secure in my own technique.
What is your idea of the furnace?
The furnace is a world which has always fascinated me, the furnace is volume, lampwork is nothing in comparison. But my work is what I have inside and the furnace is the framework I need to give value to this content. In my works the vase, the glass, the panels are simply the background and the suspended figures are the fulcrum of my work whose vitality remains undiminished.
At the moment lamp-work does not really have an artistic reputation, it still needs the furnace like a raw, crude or primitive flow which bolds together something more refined, elements in motion, details, etc. I used to use bright colors, lately I have discovered that black is able to express the strength and energy of imagination much better: Ivory is beautiful too, but it isfragile to work with.
Lampwork is fascinating territory in the greater world of glass art.
Its unique technical and aesthetic opportunities command the attention of a growing number of artists and appreciators around the globe.
Every method of manipulating glass-whether "hot," "warm" or "cold"-brings out a different aspect of this amazing material. While lampworking shares some methods with other hot techniques, it is set apart by the primary use of a focused, directional heat source: the torch flame.
This makes a unique vocabulary of techniques available for detailed work.
It also lends itself to the assembly of component pieces into larger objects. Artists using this technique are therefore challenged to make the best use of this quality, or to transcend it in an internal aesthetic confrontation.
Lampwork has an ongoing relationship with science, more so than other glass fields.
The first microscope lenses were formed by lampworking, and countless crucial developments in chemistry, physics and other sciences have depended on apparatus made of lampworked glass. The techniques and vocabulary of science are therefore more familiar to branches of lampwork, and some lampworked glass can be seen as a dialogue between art and science.
Lampworking is also "contemporary" in its encouragement of an individual approach to the medium.
Although lampworkers can and do work together, the typical studio is a one-person operation. This gives free reign to the individual's creative inspiration and the development of a personal language. And while lampworking can be and is a spontaneous process, it also affords the artist an opportunity to readjust the form, to refine the embodiment of his inspiration, in a way that other hot glass forming methods do not.