Pratt Fine Arts Center Announces Venetian Glass Exchange Program

SEATTLE, WA
October 21-25, 2013
Cane & Murrine Mastery - Advanced Hot Shop Technique
Davide Salvadore
DETAILS/ REGISTRATION

October 14-18, 2013
Experimental Figure Sculpting with Networking at the Torch
Mauro Bonaventura
DETAILS/REGISTRATION

MURANO, ITALY
April 14-18, 2014
Cane & Murrine Mastery - Advanced Hot Shop Technique
Davide Salvadore
DETAILS/ REGISTRATION

Flameworking The Figure
Lucio Bubacco
DETAILS/REGISTRATION

The Seattle program offers access to world-class glass museums, galleries, private studios and collections throughout the city and surrounding areas. Students from all over the country will have the unique experience of learning specific glass techniques from these master artists in the epicenter of contemporary glassmaking in America.

The Italian program invites students from all over to the island of Murano, which has been a celebrated center for glassmaking since the 13th century. Murano's glassmakers were considered equals amongst the island's most prominent citizens. By the 14th century, glassmakers enjoyed immunity from prosecution by the Venetian Republic, and found their daughters married into Venice's most affluent families. While they enjoyed the privileges of royalty, the glassmakers were not allowed to leave the island of Murano, protecting the magical secrets of glassmaking from the world. Despite this, many of them took the risk to leave the island and established glass furnaces in surrounding cities and beyond.

All Maestros in Pratt's exchange program come from a long lineage of multiple generations of glassmakers. The opportunity to visit Murano as a glassmaker is rare and special. Students will experience an island built for the sole purpose of creating glasswork, walk the alleyways and hear the furnaces firing up, see glass in every window down the street, and soak in the glass culture that has been made here for centuries. This is a rare chance to learn glass techniques from two world-class Venetian glass masters.

A descendant of a long line of glassworkers, Davide Salvadore was born in 1953 and still resides on the island of Murano. He followed his grandfather Antonio and maestro Alfredo Barbini, into the glass factories, assisting at the prestigious glass houses of Venini and Barovier & Toso before joining his mother in the family's glass jewelry business. In 1987, Salvadore founded his own studio and continues to make expressive one-of-a-kind sculptures that push the boundaries of tradition. He is a founding member of Centro Studio Vetro, an organization devoted to promoting Murano's glass art.

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 freestanding 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.

Right from the start, he fell in love and was mesmerized with the incandescent quality of glass. His career began when learning the techniques of glassblowing and glass decoration and to date he still remains in the glassmaker's trade. There was a turning point for Mauro in 1992 when he was fortunate to be invited by a glass maestro to observe him in lampworking.

A new passion struck Mauro when he realized this technique enabled him to explore a new and exciting way of working with glass on a closer and more intimate level. After months of evening observation and practice, the maestro Mauro Bonaventura decided it was time to leave the glass factory and concentrate and channel all his energies on the technique of lampworking. He set up his own studio to become a full time independent artist. In order to make ends meet, he was involved in typical Venetian production pieces of glass animals, rings, pendants and other objects. His works are in Corning Museum of glass and in other galleries and museum all over the world.

Pratt Fine Arts Center offers classes for all skill levels and abilities. It is the only facility in the Northwest where absolute beginners and established professional artists work side-by-side creating art in glass, sculpture, jewelry and metalsmithing, painting, drawing and printmaking. Pratt provides affordable studios with unparalleled state-of-the-art equipment and professional artist instruction to create an environment where students learn, experiment, and create. Pratt is The Place to Make Art.