MURANO GLASS AND I
"A sense of serendipity assails me as I give in to the inevitable - one more foray into the realm of Art Glass of Murano. I like to believe that my earlier somewhat maverick experimentation with art glass has created a new idiom in Indian Contemporary Art and a tangible measure of its success could be interpreted as Anjolie Ela Menon's and Antonio Da Ros's enthusiastic response & commitment to this work.With a promise to myself to strive harder to excel, and to learn and unlearn some, I find myself immersed into the mesmeric world of Murano Glass again.
Venice is unchanged - its canals still serenade the senses as much as it's glass assaults them.
Antonio Da Ros is still the same ingenuous genius I remember - as he shyly presents me with a catalogue of his recent most work done along with Ettore Sottsass. I look around us with awe at the studio filled with models of Salvador Dali's and Chagall's sketches and smile to find fighting for space on the shelves amongst them Manjit Bawa's Ganesh models from a year ago.
The Cenedese furnaces thrum with activity as the maestri and glass blowers create their masterpieces with the grace and precision of ballerinas in a highly choreographed sequence.
Any uncertainty I might have felt about how Anjolie would address and interpret a material new to her dissipated when I saw the two artists work and create together. Antonio Da Ros proved to be an inspiring and generous teacher while Anjolie, the demanding learner full of resource and inherent aptitude in the creative process of art glass. Not sharing a common language was no impediment to the creative telepathy between them Sketches and plasticine models, classical music and even the dumb charades were employed to create new artistic references.
If there us to be a credits role of sorts - mom (Amla Ruia) was the spiritual spine of this project while my father (Dada Divekar) gave emotional succor. Villy believed in me and to know that was sufficient. Anjolie has become friend and mentor for life.
Ensconced in this intangible atmosphere of Nini's studio in the mighty Gino Cenedese glassworks, I feel truly privileged to be a part of this important cross-cultural artistic experimentation and that I may be a meaningful link however tiny in the internationalization of the consciousness of Ganesh."
- Gayatri Ruia