About a week ago, Ali and I took another trip to our favorite city in Europe, Venice. We wanted to meet a few master glassblowers on Murano and see more of the Biennale before it closed. Venice has one of the greatest international art exhibitions in the world (its a popular place to exhibit artwork) and Murano is a mecca of glassblowing. Venice is also a city like none other, a "magic" city in my opinion. Venice is a good place to be for Ali and I.
We arrived in Venice late to find the hostel so we could wake right up and go straight to Murano. It took a little while to find the Hostel and check in and everything but we got it eventually. It was cold and rainy in Venice.
The next day we woke up and met the other people staying at the hostel during breakfast. A really cool world traveller named Randy and his wife were also staying at our hostel for a few days before leaving for a cruise. Randy was about 70 and originally from Seattle but now he lives in Paris. He traveled all around the world when he was young and he understood the way we traveled. We could easily talk to Randy for hours. We got down to the Rialto Market Vaporetto stop and saw that it was high tide.
Venetian police boat.
We got to the La Ferrovia (where the Vaporetto Lines that go to Murano depart from) and we found that there was an un-announced 3 hour strike for today, right then. I called Roberto and told him that we would be arriving at 1:00 now instead of 10:00. It was cold and rainy and we were really bummed that we might miss many of the glass hotshops that are only open in the morning. This strike really screwed up our plans.
While waiting for the strike to finish, we got a bite to eat and I worked on blog posts for a bit. While at the cafe we used the restroom and the doorknob to the mens restroom was a prime example of a strange europe doorknob. Not all the doorknobs in Europe are funny but many of them are just bizarre in the way they operate. There aren't many standard round doorknobs that you just turn. We caught the Vaporetto to Murano after the strike was over and after a somewhat long boat ride through choppy waters, we reached Murano and went to Roberto Dona's house.
At the Carlo Dona tool house, they were hard at work making glass tools. You see neat things when you visit Murano on a weekday! The shops aren't usually open on weekends. It is best to go to them on weekday mornings. That guy over there was polishing tweezers.
There were buckets of diamond shear blanks on the floor.
This guy looked like Roberto Dona's father, the son of Carlo Dona. I think he was grinding down blades for Jacks. Most of the "real" Murano glass shops are still family owned and run. It is neat to see them passed down from generation to generation. Roberto told us where to find Dino Rosin and his friend and venetian goblet master, Davide Fuin. Our professors told us to go visit Dino and visiting him was one of our goals when first going to Murano. Roberto called Dino and he told us that today was a little busy for him and it was a cold shopping day and he wouldn't be working in the hotshop. That was fine with us, we just wanted to see him. We set out and walked through the rain asking the glass shops and pizzerias where Dino was as we went.
Eventually, we found Dino's door we rang the bell and came right on inside.
Dino's shop was like all other Murano glass shops, his whole family was running the shop, and Dino also had an office and showroom run by members of his family. In this photo, you can see, Dino's son Diego who speaks a little bit of english. Dino was cold shopping one of his pieces when we came to see him. He makes lots of solid sculptures with a unique thin swirling color glass backround. Dino also creates big bubbles that have been cut away to become shapes in the cold shop. It was really neat to see some of his stuff even though we only got to talk to him for a little bit in our broken Italian.
More of Dino's hotshot.
A Murano water fountain.
Next up on our list was Davide Fuin, Venetian master glassblower and goblet maker. We got some directions from Dino's sister and braved the rain to walk to the other side of Murano to find Fuin's studio. While walking we passed by the church on Murano.
Eventually, we found the door to Fuin's studio with the faded name on a glass plate.
We found Fuin's studio in a small community of studios but Fuin was nowhere to be found. It looked like he was just there and would be back any time but It was starting to get kind of late in the day (2:30) and although Davide Fuin supposedly works till 4, he must have taken the rainy day off early.
You can see Davide Fuin's special jacks. They are made super tiny by Carlo Dona. Fuin had many Dona Tools on his bench. He even left his watch!
We looked around the group of studios and found this "Venice Printmaking Studio". Quite possibly the only non glass studio on Murano.
Like every good glass artist, Fuin makes drawings and works from them. Surprisingly enough, it looks like the goblet master is making a goblet.
Eventually, Ali and I got tired of waiting for Fuin to show up. We were cold, wet, and hungry and we still wanted to see this Murano glass museum. We headed down deserted Murano streets through the rain and eventually we got to the museum. It was worth the cold walk because in the museum, there was AMAZING glass. The Museum had lots of old Venetian vessels with more "fur fur" than we had ever seen before. We had always heard of these famed vessels, but never had we seen such good examples. Sadly there was a strict, no photo policy at the museum but Ali and I did buy a book that was pretty inexpensive for the size of it.
By now it was about 5:30 and we just wanted to get food and get back to our hostel. We grabbed some pizza and tried to warm up a bit at a little pizzeria then we caught the boat back to La Ferrovia and eventually, we made it back to the hotel soaking wet and very cold. It is hard to really have fun in these conditions but aside from the weather, the strike, and not being able to talk a ton to the glass masters, it wasn't really a terrible day and we were glad to be in Venice.
The next morning, I woke up and looked out our balcony window to see the small courtyard flooded from the canal water! The water was flowing in from under the gate and it was way cool!
We walked through the Rialto Market to the Rialto Market Vaporetto stop. The weather looked much better and sunnier than the day before.
We got on the PACKED Vaporetto and set out for "Giardini" (where the Biennale is held). The water was very high and was flooding the restaurants and sidewalks. Its business as usual in Venice.
High water.
After a crowded vaporetto ride and waiting in line to get tickets to get into the Biennale, we finally got in. Like last time, we saw many more exhibitions. I will include some of my favorites.
It is interesting to see what some countries put into the Biennale. Venezuela for example, put in graffiti street artists, and while there are some famous street artists, graffiti is typically shunned in the high art world. Its nice to see them ignoring the people who wouldn't consider the graffiti "fine art".
I showed Ali my favorite piece in the Biennale, Kimsooja's "Breathe" piece. As always, there was a line.
After the South Korean pavilion, we went and got lunch. Last time we were here this sign wasn't on but this time it was. Way cool neon! Be on the lookout for a Euro Neon post coming soon! I may send it to Fred Tschida and Sarah Blood at Alfred.
This is the inside of the Ship bar. There was a bit of a line.
We went to the Finland pavilion...
The artist, Antti Laitinen was doing some very interesting things where he would disassemble things from nature and then re assemble them in his own way. These are trees he built from a tree that he cut down in Finland. Read the description to see a bit more about his work.
A disassembled pond.
This one was neat.
He took everything from this square of forest and laboriously sorted everything into categories. He took HD video of him working. I believe it is this absurd almost meaningless work that Laitinen is going after. He is making the process itself the art piece and he documents it in a presentable way.
Antti Laitinen's work was very interesting to me.
Another interesting exhibition was the Hungry Pavilion. Fired but Unexploded is the work of Zsolt Asztalos and he focuses on unexploded munitions, scattered throughout Europe (and the World) through its many wars.
Asztalos uses the medium of video and sound to convey the message here. The video is just a still image of a bomb or artillery shell that never detonated and the sounds that went with it ranged widely from the sounds of a church mass going, to the sound of someone doing dishes in a kitchen, to the sound of children playing and even the sound of lots of people laughing. They were snapshots of domestic life and they bring up the question of who the bombs were originally fired at (many of the munitions weren't really very accurate) and what if the bombs went off? (how would today be different) What happens if they do explode in proximity to these innocent people? It was a very neat exhibition.
I really liked the Polish pavilion. It was the last one we went to and it only "worked" 4 times a day.
A big sound exhibition by Konrad Smolenski, He took an idea that I had while in Florence and made it reality. He took the sound from two ringing bells and processed it in real time with a delay and played it back on these huge speakers and on giant woofers behind the metal plates that shook the whole pavilion! Sadly, the volume had to be lowered after the first month of the piece showing because residents on a nearby island were complaining about their houses shaking. The piece was closed for about a month while alterations were being made but now it is open and it only shows with the doors closed and people warning you about the noise.
The speakers were massive the bells sounded great and the 15 minute soundshow was fantastic! To see more about this go here...
http://www.labiennale.art.pl/#start
We got out of the Polish Pavillion and the biennale just in time to catch the sunset.
We wandered back on over to our hostel to grab our stuff and get some dinner before catching the train back to Florence. While passing by some glass shops near Piazza San Marco we saw what looked to be the work of Dino Rosin.
We caught the train back to Florence and we were back in Florence before too late, in time to eat a second snack dinner and get ready for bed. It was a good weekend in Venice, our favorite city in Europe!
