Light is the Magic…
In 1983, Paul Marioni fell in love with Mexico. His work had been monochromatic (black, grey, white, clear, and mirror glass) but five months in Mexico City at the invitation of Felipe Derflinger, working in the Feders Glass Factory and traveling Felipe’s exhibit around the country, introduced him to the richness of five cultures and caused an explosion of color in his work. He was drawn to the passionate art of Frida Kahlo long before she was a household name, bribing a guard with $5 to sit on her bed and read her diary before the Blue House became a museum. When in 1990 UNESCO declared Guanajuato, Mexico a Living Treasure (the 3rd city after Venice, Italy and Valenica, Spain to receive the honor), he went to see it. He was there about five days when his ridiculously cheap bid to buy an extraordinary but long-neglected house with a billion-dollar view was accepted.
Marioni spent years rebuilding the five-story adobe house, transforming its 2,500 square-foot garden into a jungle paradise. For 27 years, he worked in Seattle, but he lived in Mexico. In 2019, he closed his Seattle house and studio to be in Mexico full-time. Marioni is a politically active person (when he was 11 years old, he wrote Bertrand Russell a letter asking to join the Ban-the-Bomb movement), but his interest in politics is more philosophical than partisan. Rather than taking sides (right or left, right or wrong), he is fascinated with how politics is an exaggeration of the best and worst in human nature. The Mexican approach to politics better suits his way of seeing (he says “if someone brings up politics, everyone bursts out laughing and that is the end of it” because “they quit believing in politics one hundred years ago after the last Revolution”). He also loves the Mexican approach to family and community (among his myriad accomplishments, he takes a lot of pride in having raised two children as a single parent).
View from Marioni’s home and garden in Guanajuato and his spectacular view of the city.
Now, his greatest joy in life is tending to the hundreds of flowers his booming garden and getting into his small unequipped studio to tackle nagging creative ideas. In December 2019, he went to Derix Studios in Germany to build 3,500 square feet of glass walls for a new Light Rail Station in Bellevue, WA called The Main Station (it serves Microsoft and Boeing). This November, he plans to be on site with his daughter, Marina, to execute the terrazzo floors of his design. He has completed more than one hundred commissions (more than half of which were public art projects) in his fifty-one years as an artist, a challenge he loves because making art for someone else means learning and trying new ideas and materials. His gallery artwork is about his life as a human being. He is careful not to tell the viewer what to think but hopes to inspire the viewer to think for themselves (and he has gotten an enormous variety of responses). He also gets excited about his collection of over 300 Mexican masks, and the fact that he has made over 200 masks as artwork. The duality of masks fascinates him; they can conceal identity or transform you into another character such as a wolf, owl, or jaguar. And the irony is not lost on him that in these days of COVID-19, he is required to wear a mask when he goes into the bank!
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Marioni poses with some of his 300-mask collection.
Marioni and a portion of his glass walls for the Light Rail station in Bellevue, WA.
Of his career in glass, he says:
“I consider myself an artist, rather than a glass artist. I use glass solely for its ability to capture, manipulate, and magnify light. Glass is the only material to do that. Plus, look at all those translucent colors. I am just as happy drawing and painting, but Light is the magic that brings glass to life. My kinetic sculptures rock, causing the light to move within the piece, bring it to life. Some sculptures make noises as they rock, thus also speaking. Most artwork is asleep hanging on a wall or sitting on a pedestal.”
Marioni has spent his career defying common notions, not the least of which is the one that dictates: “don’t touch that, it’s glass.” He loves living, he loves working, and each piece of art he creates inspires a similar engagement with life, so go ahead and touch it!
This magnolia, golden datura, and some passion flowers are just some examples from Marioni’s thriving Mexican garden.
Meet the Artist in this series of videos…
All rights reserved. ©2011, Museum of Glass Visiting Artist Residency.
By John Forsen
Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend and Paul Marioni talk at the Craft in America Center March 21, 2014.
Available Works by Paul Marioni…
About the Artist….
Paul Marioni is a founding member of the American Studio Glass movement and in love with the medium for its distinct ability to capture and manipulate light. Techniques have been explored and mastered but always in service of ideas about the complexities and foibles of being human. No subject seems off limits to this artist-renegade-philosopher-humorist.