Page 54 - Lino Tagliapietra Synchronicity

“For more than 40 years, work and travel have been my life companions.
I have never needed a break and have always loved to be busy on a daily basis.” Lino Tagliapietra
Like many artists whose practice requires working collaboratively, Tagliapietra’s production was interrupted by the pandemic that still reverberates throughout the world. Having worked day in and day out for decades, the experience of suddenly being unable to continue was unprecedented — either to be in the studio with his team, or to travel to workshops and exhibitions. Rather than remain idle, however, he soon turned to a project he had thought about for years but had never had the time to carry out: stained glass panels, in which traditional leading connected multiple elements. The result is a series collectively titled ‘Dream of a Long Winter.’
The piece from this series on view in this exhibition seems at first to feature two gourd-shaped vessels, silhouetted against a background of a deep blue-green. The vessels touch, side by side, their curving stripes of red or blue creating an impression of dimensionality — in the same way that the lines in a drawing make us see a round shape as a sphere, instead of the flat image it actually is. If we look longer, however, contemplating the image as a whole, questions arise. Are these two different forms, or actually views of the front and back of the same piece? And, if the eye reads the curving lines as dimensionality, then what is the meaning of the curving lines that traverse the multiple shapes that make up the background? Suddenly, the whole panel: a sedate composition of leaded glass, looks as though it is in motion. This impression is further reinforced by the rhythmic, wave-like carving that is crisscrossed with parallel lines of cobalt blue on each of the background pieces.The fact that Murano is an island comes to mind. For most of his life, Tagliapietra has lived in a place filled with vistas of both sky and water, blue and green elements in a constant dance of change.
These vase-like forms could be buoys, or balloons, or neither of these things. Such readings are a reminder that Tagliapietra’s work has been described as “the meeting point of abstraction and figuration,”3 and that the artist himself has characterized it as a type of Impressionism executed with Venetian technique. Simply imagining him, working at his own pace, examining each decision and acting on his own as he moved towards completion, is compelling. The “vessels” seen here parallel were originally all part of one piece, repurposed here as part of his new kind of work.
In this panel, many different techniques and practices exist simultaneously — synchronously, as it were: the blown and then flattened glass that makes up the expansive forms that fill the center of the composition, carefully cut to accentuate their curves; the carved lines, made on cold glass, and the lines of blue created by laying threads of glass across the background of teal and melting them in a kiln. This is all the more remarkable for the fact that Tagliapietra doesn’t draw or write plans of any kind, but rather makes his decisions with the material itself, as decades of experience allow him to think through the process, knowing physically what will happen — or how to work with what does, when the unexpected takes place.
3 “Lino Tagliapietra: Glass Act,” Jon Dorfman, Art and Antiques Magazine 2016
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