Tacoma Arts In Review: Maestro Lino Tagliapietra Visits the Museum of Glass Hot Shop
Anyone who has had the chance to visit the Museum of Glass Hot Shop knows how mesmerizing the process of glass blowing can be. Watching the artists at work is an experience that demands your whole attention as the team grips, swirls, pulls, and attaches fantastical colors and hues that glow before your eyes. Glass artists work with tools reminiscent of an auto shop or junkyard, yet the vibrancy of their final products reveal the delicacy and skill of this art form.
The Hot Shop team at MOG has a breathtaking mastery over the medium of glass, and the Summer Visiting Artist series promises to deliver a unique array of styles and processes to Tacoma. Watch artists at work in the Hot Shop, live at the museum or online at http://www.museumofglass.org/glassmaking/live-from-the-hot-shop.
The 2011 Summer Series features 14 artists who will bring their unique styles and process to Tacoma, but no artist’s arrival is more anticipated than Italian Maestro Lino Tagliapietra.
Revered world wide as the master of modern glass blowing, Lino Tagliapietra is also respected as a teacher who has generously shared his craft. Lino began working in glass over half a century ago at the age of 11 in Murano, Italy and now, according to the Museum of Glass, he is considered nearly single-handedly responsible for “universally elevating the art and craft of glassmaking and changing the course of contemporary glass.”
It is largely because Lino generously shared his knowledge of Venetian techniques with the Pacific Northwest, specifically at the Pilchuck Glass School, that American glass making has flourished and grown to what it is today.
A stroll through the Museum of Glass will demonstrate Lino Tagliapietra’s influence on the modern world of glass art. It should be a treat to see Tagliapietra’s “Clear Dinosaur” featured in MOG’s “Fertile Ground: Recent Masterworks from the Visiting Artist Residency Program,” an exhibition that showcases many artist who have learned from Lino.
See Lino work in person this week at the Tacoma Museum of Glass Hotshop, June 6-10. The Museum will open at 9 am each day this week, and Tagliapietra will be in the Hot Shop from 9 am until 3pm.
To find out more about the other Visiting Artists coming to Tacoma this summer: http://www.museumofglass.org/glassmaking/visiting-artists
Review by Jill Sanford
Lead photo by Stephen Vest; all photos courtesy of the Museum of Glass
ABOUT TACOMA ARTS IN REVIEW
Tacoma Arts In Review, a new column on Exit 133, regularly shares timely reviews and stories on art happenings in Tacoma written by local college students and community members. For more information and application details, go here.