Today we have walked miles around Venice and the two islands of Burano and Murano.
Burano famous for its many coloured houses and Murano famous for the glass making. As we walked around we got to see some of the master craftsmen at work. In one workshop we watched as a guy turned a a lump of molten glass into a beautiful prancing horse in about a minute. His colleague said said a minute to make but 20 years to master.
So the first picture was taken on Burano, the colour of the wall was what first caught my attention but it was the detail of the window itself that really stood out.
The second shot is of the floor in the Chiese di San Giorgio Maggiore, from one angle the pattern appears flat but change your perspective just slightly and then it becomes much more interesting. I once tried to create a similar effect to this in marquetry, it was quite good but nowhere near as good as this.
From the church tower I was able to get a few panoramic shots of the city and I saw a strange art work in the gardens below. I remember from my last visit there had been a glass teahouse installation "Mondrian" by Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto,so I went to find out more of the new work.
It was called "Qwalala" by the American artist Pae White, it is a wall that snakes through the garden and it is made of 3000 hand cast glass bricks. Even on such a hot day the glass was surprisingly cool to the touch, although we found out too late that we were not supposed to touch the artwork OOPS!
Anyway I think it was a really effective creation and the individual bricks had real character, some with splashes of colour and others that were clear and provided a soft focused image of the background. I took a few pictures and I have selected just two of the more interesting ones.
Tomorrow morning we are heading off to Florence.
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