Cornacchia 2000

Lino Tagliapietra made this Cornacchia, Italian for crow, using glass, a medium that starts out molten, and ends up frozen. I can only imagine the heat, the speed, and the risk involved in making this form; this dance with gravity. There’s a push and pull between what glass wants to do—drip, sag—and what the artist coaxes it to become. It's not painting, but I think about my relationship to paint the same way. What does paint want to do? Drip! What do I want it to do? Well, that’s the question. Here, the contrast between smooth, translucent, and opaque, textured areas makes me think about skin and surface. The banded lines wrapping the vessel remind me of Frank Stella's pin-stripe paintings, yet the organic form makes me think of the way the Futurists attempted to depict motion. Artists are always in conversation, riffing off each other, cross-pollinating ideas.