EXPO ‘Orfeo Quagliata’ – Velvet da Vinci Gallery, San Francisco (USA) – 2-28 Aout 2011
Orfeo Quagliata
New Work
Orfeo Quagliata has been working with glass since he was 12 years old, when he began apprenticing with his father, acclaimed artist Narcissus Quagliata and his Grandmother, Herta Jalkotzy, an award-winning jewelry designer in the Wiener Werkstätte. He learned cold-working techniques at age 17 from Catalonian glass artist José Fernandez Castrillo. He later began experimenting with other techniques, such as lamp-wroking and fusing, after earning a BFA in Industrial and Furniture Design from the California College of Arts (CCA). For this exhibition Orfeo has worked in collaboration with famed Swarovski Elements crystal to produce his jewelry and unique cups of facetted borosilicate.
« so I wanted to write al lil bit about what glass is to me. its glass. i just found out the other day that the night I was born there was an eclipse….seems fitting. I’ve fallen in love working with swarovski elements. At first it was kind of funny to me. somebody else giving me things that i essentially make to make things out of. all funnnieness aside it was funny. but as i started working with it, it became ….no pun intended full of funness. I was stoked. As lupita, miss swarovski mexico 2010, put it….orfeo has no respect for our crystal. He cuts it melts it and generally disrespects it…and i think thats why she and the gang liked what i was doing. So there i went…off on a swargent, when i surfaced a few months later, there was all sorts of cool shit in piles around me. As i started posting the photos and doing the events with sky vodka and swarovski elements, i realized it was pretty cool. sometimes you just need to get it outside the shop to appreciate it. As I progressed we entered a competition with swarovski and won first prize….and now i have a show at velvetdavinci…in my beloved San Francisco….but i can’t go because im picking up the pieces from the tangent……..wish i could be there. » Orfeo Quagliata Mexico City, August 2011
green chain
« Smuve » Neckpiece
‘Morningstar ‘
ring
‘caliz’ ring
Velvet da Vinci Gallery
2015 Polk Street (between Pacific and Broadway)
San Francisco CA 94109 – USA
tel 415.441.0109