Venetian glass master at the 2018 Festival of Glass

The Festival of Glass committee is delighted to announce that Venetian glass master Mauro Vianello will be our Visiting Artist at the 2018 Festival.

Mauro Vianello

Mauro is a world renowned glass master who creates highly naturalistic representations in glass of animals and plants, many of them associated with the sea. His visit offers intermediate and experienced bead-makers & sculptors across Australia a unique opportunity to learn traditional and contemporary Venetian glass processes and techniques and to use them to enhance their beaded & sculptured creations. Places in his classes at the 2018 Festival are open ... and are filling up!

Glenda MacNaughton is the Festival committee member running the Visiting Artist programme. “Bringing Mauro to the Bellarine Peninsula is quite a coup for the Festival!”, she said. “This will be his first visit to Australia, but his enormous skill as an artist and a teacher brings him invitations from around the world to teach and to create blown glass, glass beads and glass sculptures.”

In June this year, Mauro was in Pittsburgh, USA and in August he will be a featured artist at the 2017 “Flame Off France” in Remiremont. In 2016, Murano’s Museo Vetro (Museum of Glass) held an exhibition highlighting the continuity between Mauro's work and that of father and son Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka - two nineteenth century glass artists from Dresden, Germany who achieved international fame for their highly detailed, accurate glass models of plants and sea creatures.

Generosity and patience from a glass master

Mauro has been a glass worker for twenty three years. He creates anything in glass - from traditional Venetian beads to small and large sculptures, often combining lampworking and glass fusing with cold-worked glass. As a teacher, Mauro’s aim is for each student to leave his classes happy, having increased their skill and knowledge. His students praise his generosity and patience as a teacher and his ability to tailor his teaching to suit their differing interests and skill levels. They also delight in his sense of humour!