Imagine being a 20-year-old who has always lived in Venice and feels like he’s had enough of Murano glass: he’s had it around since he was a child and sees it as one boring and nostalgic world. And now he’s in a modern workshop in Washington state’s montane woods, surrounded by fir and cedar trees, blowing glass until 4 a.m. with people his age, house music pumping non-stop in the background. This is a dream, you would think, and wonder why can’t Murano be that fun, too?
Now you’re a teenager in Minneapolis, or Chicago, or New Orleans, or somewhere else in the US. You’ve become passionate about glass after school and regularly take classes in a local studio on a scholarship. You’ve never traveled to anywhere in Europe, but you’ve heard about the colors and wonders of Murano; you look up to the legendary maestri, whose names your teachers reference all the time and whose glassblowing secrets one can only dream of unveiling. Then here you are, in a huge, centuries-old Venetian furnace surrounded by water, colorful cotissi glass rocks and tons of canes and murrine of the most diverse shades piled up in every corner; and you blow glass, guided by a well-respected maestro who’s been in the game for 50, 60 years. Doesn’t it, too, sound like a dream?
Bridging two apparently distant worlds through glass, Autonoma is an exchange program addressed to young international glass artists and Laguna~B’s most long-standing culture and community project. Every year, with the help of coordinator Benjamin Wright, Laguna~B partners with a different US-based non-profit organization, inviting students to spend time in Venice and Murano. And while the participants get to see the city and learn traditional techniques from local experts, Murano—with its aging population and fewer youth willing to continue their families’ glassmaking businesses—gets an energizing injection of young talents, new ideas, and good vibes. Both sides get to appreciate a different perspective on their favorite craft.
“It felt like a dream” was indeed a recurrent answer when asking Autonoma’s participants to recall the experience of traveling to Venice for the residency. That’s also the expression that Marcantonio used when he described the beginning of the project, which he established in 2017 in collaboration with Pilchuck Glass School.
Founded by Dale Chihuly in 1971, Pilchuck is one of the most prominent glass institutions in the US. It’s located in a 55-acre area occupied by a tree farm in the foothills of the Cascade Range, 60 km from Seattle. Since its establishment, generations of American and international glass artists have studied and worked there, including Judy Chicago and Kiki Smith.
When he first heard of it, Marcantonio had just taken over his late mother’s glassware business, and he was struggling to find motivation to run the company in a way that felt meaningful and personal. “I began researching what contemporary glass looked like and who were the people interpreting Murano glass with a contemporary approach. Laura de Santillana, an extraordinary artist from the Venini family, introduced me to Pilchuck, suggesting I go check it out,” he recalled.
To Marcantonio, spending time at the school was revelatory. He had applied for a three-week course and had returned (after only five days) filled with “enthusiasm and admiration for the energy surrounding the American glass scene.” Something that, he thought, was lacking back home. Eventually, he said, “I decided to bring that energy to Murano.”
Autonoma’s initial formula saw Laguna~B Muranese glassmasters traveling to Pilchuck for summer residencies, and Pilchuck students—most of them emerging artists in their thirties with ongoing practices–spending time in Murano in turn.
But soon the format evolved, increasingly focusing on younger artists and high schoolers who wouldn’t normally afford to travel to Venice or pay for professional glass education. “Our dream was to create an international network of very young artists and inspire them to pursue a career in glass.” In 2023, Pilchuck and Autonoma hosted the International Youth Conference, gathering glass-passionate high schoolers and their teachers from three different countries. “I wanted them to see how cool glass could actually be and the opportunities it could offer.”
The rebellious, energetic approach that had fascinated Marcantonio so much on that first visit to Pilchuck has its roots in the Studio Glass movement that, in the late 60s, set out to change the international glass scene forever. These artists—a group that included Harvey Littleton, Mary Shaffer, Richard Marquis, Pilchuck’s founder Dale Chihuly, and many more—were passionate and committed to learning, experimenting, and innovating. But since at the time the actual manufacturing was confined to factories, they lacked the technical knowledge needed to make glass art independently in their own studio. The first Studio Glass artist to visit Venice was Dale Chihuly, in 1968. Of the dozens of glasshouses he had written to, requesting permission to observe their glassblowers, only Ludovico Diaz de Santillana, the director of the Venini Glassworks, said yes. But that was enough. Several other artists followed suit, traveling to Murano—where traditional techniques were still shrouded in secrecy—to learn from the few local furnaces that would allow them in, repurposing the newly acquired skills in artworks that felt incredibly contemporary.
This was the beginning of a long-standing love story between two very different cultures. Pilchuck Glass School was born in the wake of this fruitful “cross-pollination”—in the words of Tina Oldknow, curator of the 2021 exhibition Venice and American Studio Glass at Stanze del Vetro, in Venice—which led to the diffusion of Venetian glassworking processes in the US and all over the world during the Nineties.
Autonoma, as well as the hundreds of independent studios where youth can practice glassmaking today, wouldn’t exist without the movement that democratized it in the first place, allowing many to tell their stories through glass.
Moncies Franco, now 23, began working with glass at 19. He was finishing alternative school in Minneapolis when he applied to a course in the local hotshop, Foci, with the sole purpose of collecting a few extra credits.
Established in 2009, Foci is the only non-profit, public access glass studio in Minnesota. It provides classes in glassblowing, kilnforming, and flameworking, offering paid scholarships to those who wouldn’t afford the courses otherwise.
Requiring expensive tools, intense training, as well as gas-powered, safe, and ventilated workshops, glass has never been the most accessible art form. Yet the organization’s goal to contrast the persistent “societal, cultural, economic, and systemic barriers” that are inherent to glassmaking is paying off.
Since he first visited Foci, Moncies Franco has never left. “Glass has changed my entire life,” he told me. “In the past few years, I’ve worked with incredible artists like Laura Donefer and MiNHi England. I’ve done residencies at the Corning Museum of Glass. I’m making incredible connections. I got to travel to many places. It’s definitely changed everything.”
One year ago, he also traveled to Venice with his Foci fellows Ariana, Jorge, and Izaiah to take part in Autonoma’s 2025 iteration. None of them had traveled outside the US before. During the residency, they worked in a Murano hotshop at a collaborative installation; visited the exhibitions in town; and even met Lino Tagliapietra, a legend in the field and one of the most relevant figures in the American Studio Glass movement. Challenging the unspoken rule that Muranese techniques should be closely guarded, Tagliapietra regularly traveled to the US to teach, especially at Pilchuck, and pass down his knowledge to generations of emerging American artists. Franco said that meeting the artist, who is now 90 years-old, “still feels like a dream, too much to put into words.” He now works as a youth advocate and mentor, “teaching kids how to blow glass” and visiting schools to inform students about apprenticeship opportunities with Foci.
Autonoma has shown that glass can be transformative and life-changing, transcending the value of artifacts in and of themselves. While the project was initially born out of the desire to revive the Murano traditional glassmaking scene while supporting emerging talents, the process has since brought to light a multitude of powerful, inspiring stories—proving the importance of such initiatives on a deeper level than just the creative one.
In June 2024, five students from Firebird Community Arts, in Chicago, arrived in Murano as part of Autonoma to attend a 10-day glassblowing residency alongside their Italian peers of a local high school. The organization’s main program, Project FIRE, offers glassmaking classes to youth affected by gun violence, as a pathway to healing and rebuilding a sense of safety and community.
N’Kosi Barber, a glass artist and a teacher at Project FIRE whom we met during Autonoma, told me about an empowering side of glassmaking that I hadn’t previously considered: “Lots of us had never seen glassmaking before we started working with it. I feel that [from it] comes a lot of confidence: You’ve never seen this art form before, and now you’re doing it. And now you’re good at it. Subconsciously, that shows you that you can do anything you put your mind to.”
The road is still long to the moment when glass art is accessible to everyone willing to pursue it. In 2020, the Corning Museum published a report titled The Whiteness of Glass, highlighting how BIPOC artists still remain largely underrepresented and lack opportunity in the field today. (N’Kosi Barber, asked how being among the few Black glass artists felt, said it was “quite scary.”)
Yet, nurturing relationships and opening doors to all young artists means new ideas and initiatives are constantly on the plate. Moncies Franco is currently attending business and finance classes to learn how to carry out a personal project, Dead Dreams. “I’m working with BIPOC artists and artists from different backgrounds who don’t have enough money to do what they want, or to go to college, or go to school. I want to help them, as an artist, develop themselves as artists and get the work out there. Because everybody has their story to tell.”
The latest edition of Autonoma—a collaboration with a public school in Norfolk, Virginia, that saw six teenage glass students and two teachers traveling to Venice—concluded a few weeks ago. Every year, after the participants head back home, we renew our promise: we’ll always be committed to supporting the next generation of glass artists, and we’ll stay inspired by their energy and passion.
Cover photo: Participants of Autonoma 2024 from Yaya, New Orleans, working inside Carlo Pitau’s hotshop. Credits: Laguna~B