The Tacoma News Tribune just published a significant article about the Australian glassblowers who will be here working with Richard Marquis this week and next. The article gives some great background on who these guys are, why they are important and how knowledge of making glass got from Italy to the Pacific Northwest to down under.

From literally nothing in 1974 to Australians winning world glass prizes in the last decade is a speedy trajectory for an art form – and this in a country of just 20 million, where glass studios can be counted using two hands and where major museums and collectors don’t have anything like the budget or tradition of philanthropy that the United States does. So it says something about Australia’s artists and schools that the art is in such high regard.

“Most of the work in Australia is so much better than here,” says Dante Marioni, the Seattle-based, internationally-known artist… “In the U.S., there’s so much crap: fake Chihulys, fake Tagliapietras. Not there. It’s a different aesthetic – cleaner, slicker, not so derivative.”

Read the full article…