Lucio Bubacco

see my web site gallery www.luciobubacco.com
I was born in 1957, and in the early Seventies I started to visit furnaces which belonged to my father's friends, though I mostly played around. But my basis remains lampwork (I used to heat glass for a craftsman). My father Severino Bubacco, a somewhat famous glassmaster who travelled the world for work, gave me the opportunity when I was a teenager to join him in France and America: that's when I realized what was happening outside our country the ideas and the different approaches to glass. I was able to show my work, but it was mostly commercial stuff. Only Murano could give me the proper technical preparation. Simultaneously I attempted to cultivate my other passion which was drawing.Very few of us had our own businesses, and the older ones were firmly established. When I completed my military service, I opened my first store, then a workshop with Emilio Santini who later moved to the United States. That's when I opened a boutique in Venice and only then did I start to interact with a wider range of people, and develop my work.At first I made animals in different shapes and sizes. But at the same time I wanted to pursue an idea which was technically almost impossible. To eliminate the defects in figures, in the human body is a very slow process. Art school students want quick results, but it takes a lot of practice to shape details in glass.Even as a child I was attracted by history, by the images of soldiers and costume-clad figures whose forms derived from classical Greek Roman and Byzantine art. Butyou bave to shift your focus, and my first form of expression were not in glass as you see it now in my works. I went through phases dedicated to painting, to clay, even to making molds for masks. And for quite a long time I displayed a variety of different things in my store-window in Sant'Aponal in Venice in order to earn a living. But I was always more interested in glass form than color. To be able to extract a iife out of a glass rod.When I show my work in an exhibition it means that I have reached the next step in my personal evolution. It's easy to lower your standards if you don't change direction, branch out from a theme that is your own and express yourself freely. This is where other aspects of my personal history and my character come in. I have had contacts in many different fields lately. I like the idea of creating works on commission to fit into a context, a scenario such as a beautiful home or a garden, or even the cruise ship that was offered to me recently. I always consider myself in relation to glass and its potential, and allow myself to be stimulated. Had I been born anywhere else I would have been a painter or a sculptor.