Today I opened the window to let the spring come in, and I discovered to my surprise that the forest is in my house and the landscape is within me.
Miriam Di Fiore: Illusions of Eternity
Miriam Di Fiore’s journey through life and glass reads much like Laura Esquivel’s popular 1989 novel, Like Water for Chocolate. With a similar magical realism, the kiln worker discovered both her artistic medium and voice beginning in the small seaside town where she grew up in Argentina. Though it was a forbidden love, a lifelong relationship with fused glass triumphed in the face of political adversity and family objection.
As a child Di Fiore lived in Miramar, a little city near the Atlantic Ocean protected from wind and sand by a vast pine forest. Because important moments of childhood passed among those trees, the forest continues to contain deep and symbolic meaning inspiring the drawing, painting, and photography vital to the artist’s work.
“What I try to do with my art is not an interpretation of the woods, but rather a simple respectful translation in glass of a little part of our wonderful world where I have been in the company of trees. I want to speak about that place and how I felt there. In that way I can share at least a part of the magic and beautiful moments that made me feel happy to be alive. My works are an illusion of eternity, virtual places that try to preserve what’s constantly changing and what my eyes see in fragments of time.”
Di Fiore received her art degree in ceramics and drawing in 1977 from the Escuela Nacional de Ceramica y Dibujo, Mar del Plata, Argentina. In 1991, she studied pate de verre with Linda Ethier at Creative Glass, Zurich, Switzerland, which inspired and informed a new direction in Di Fiore’s fused glass. Additional training took place in 1994 at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, from instructors Lino Tagliapietra and Rudy Gritsch. Her professional experience includes working as Narcissus Quagliata’s teaching assistant at the Museum of the Royal School of Glass, Segovia, Spain, and for his Florence, Italy, seminars in the 1990s.
Represented by Habatat Gallery, Mostly Glass Gallery, and SOFA throughout the 2000s, Di Fiore’s work can be found in the permanent museum collections of the Corning Museum of Glass (CMOG), Corning, New York; the Newark Fine Art Museum, Newark, New Jersey; Cafsejian Museum of Contemporary Art, Armenia; Museo Nazional del Vidrio, Segovia, Spain; in the Coleccion Estable de la Revista del Vidrio, Barcelona, Spain; in the Museo delle Arti Decorative, Castello Sforzesco, Milan, Italy and in the Municipal Glass Art Museum of Alcorcon, Madrid, Spain.