BEAD artists have been treated to workshops in techniques rarely taught outside Venice.
People came from around the country to attend Lisa-Jane Harvey’s Born to Bead Studio at Bucklands Beach, and the drawcard was tuition from internationally known Swiss artist Anne Londez.
“We rarely have the opportunity to host international bead artists, normally only in bead week in May,” Ms Harvey says.
However, Ms Londez included the workshops at Bucklands Beach and Sydney in her southern hemisphere summer-holiday itinerary.
The advanced students learned about off-mandrel sculptural techniques of the human form that come from Murano Island in Venice.
They were a closely guarded secret in Murano and, up until 200 years ago, artists were punished with death if they left the island.
“Consequently this traditional technique is not taught much out of Venice,” Ms Londez says.
“There are many different ways of doing things, but I like their technique which has been used for hundreds of years.”
“In Europe they are protective of what they do and don’t always want to pass skills on,” she says.
“But that is not the case in the US where I first studied working with glass and was privileged to work with the people I did.
“So part of what I have to do is to pass on the knowledge, the same as they did with me.”
Her passion, she says, is for soft glass that melts easily and flows.
“It is more difficult to work with. It doesn’t allow for mistakes because it shatters. But I have a passion for that because you can play with the flow.
“You have to deeply understand the material and that can be a lifetime’s work. I’m keen on getting students to understand that.”
She opened her studio in Switzerland in 2003 after spending the first 10 years of her professional life as a research scientist.
Ms Londez’s work has been published in several books and exhibition catalogues.
