Lino Tagliapietra

In April 2001, Venetian master glass blower Lino Tagliapietra received the Society of Arts and Crafts' Medal for Excellence in Craft. While in Boston to receive the award, Tagliapietra, the only Italian master who regularly visits the US to share his expertise with American glassblowers, demonstrated his famed filigree techniques in a workshop in Cambridge. Greater Boston Arts' camera follows the process of alternately blowing on a molten glob of glass and rolling it over multicolored glass canes to create a vessel of layered kaleidoscopic color that is classically Venetian. American glass artists Dante Marioni and Andrew Magdanz describe Tagliapietra's influence. Curators from two concurrent shows of his work explain that the artistic exchange goes two ways: Tagliapietra has learned something here that Venice never taught him -- that glass can be a personally expressive art.

Lino Tagliapietra Medal for Excellence in Craft exhibition
The Society of Arts and Crafts
175 Newbury Street, Boston
March 9 - April 29, 2001
For more information call (617) 266-1810 or visit www.societyofcrafts.org.

Lino Tagliapietra e Amici
Fuller Museum of Art
455 Oak Street, Brockton
February 24 - May 20, 2001
For information call (508) 588-6000 or visit www.fullermuseumofart.org.

José Mateo's Ballet Theatre

This spring, ballet choreographer José Mateo inaugurates his company's new rehearsal space and stage -- an 80-foot-long room in the renovated Old Cambridge Church. The new space represents a re-birth for the company, which for several years had not performed new works in order to concentrate on organizational development. Mateo and manager Scott Fraser describe the company's long journey from cramped quarters in Boston and Central Square to the magnificent new facility. In this unusual performance space, Mateo can offer his audience great sight lines, closer proximity to the dancers, and a deeper sense of involvement and intimacy. Observing rehearsal for the upcoming spring concert, Greater Boston Arts shares the excitement of Mateo and his dancers as they prepare to present new work.

José Mateo's Ballet Theatre presents
Resurgence
400 Harvard Street, Cambridge
April 20 - May 6, 2001
For tickets and information call (617) 354-7467 or visit www.btb.org.

Symphony of a City

Greater Boston Arts takes a wild ride with artists Liz Canner and John Ewing as they prepare for Boston's latest experiment in public art that is part Media Lab futurism, part civics education, and part "Real World." The two artists are taking the public art plunge with a high-tech project that actually allows the art to be created by the public. "Symphony of a City" puts video of the lives of a group of racially and socially distinct Bostonians onto a huge four-way split screen image on the façade of City Hall and on the web at www.symphonyofacity.org. The videos are made by wearcams (wearable video cameras) with which participants will record their daily lives; the unedited footage will in turn be served up publicly as a collective eye onto the soul of the city. Greater Boston Arts follows the complicated process of creating a new kind of art that tries to put public art to the public good.

Boston Cyberarts presents
Symphony of a City
Boston City Hall
1 City Hall Plaza, Boston
and at www.symphonyofacity.org.
April 27 and May 4, 2001
For more information call (617) 524-8495 or visit www.bostoncyberarts.org.