Gina Salaris
Finland
Gina Salaris is a Finnish glass designer who creates utility, art and unique glass in her workshop. Making the glassworks smell of life, the joy of success, the sweat and the excitement drive Gina's inspiration. Respect for expertise and diversity are the foundations of Gina Salaris's work. She is fascinated by the limitless unpredictability of glass.
"Molten glass is like an unruly brat; his mood must be directed in the desired direction with great love."
She is currently making bold and adventurous glass rabbits that rebel against the gloom. It is tantalising to develop these characters and their stories, to distil them and take their features and fates further and further, until certain features take that final, sculptural form in her mind. She wonders what kind of outfit and shape some crazy prankster will get!
Gina Salaris's rabbits often play with the uninhibited and she finds inspiration in famous iconic elements as well as in familiar everyday life. Maybe this is something that interests and fascinates people about her rabbits.
Perhaps, partly because of her Finnish-Italian roots, she is equally at home in Venice, Nuutajärvi and the Brazilian rainforest. Rabbits are cosmopolitans too: their spiritual birthplaces are all over the world.
However, the origin of these rabbits is not very light. She approached grief and pain from the point of view of what is one's own choice in how we face loss and how we receive what we hear. Many of her rabbits have a golden ear, which allows them to hear good and difficult things well and correctly.
Is it possible to find something in difficult things that will move you forward and give you strength for the future? Gina Salaris's rabbits are dynamic and brave, ready for a new leap.
The rabbits have been part of a phase in which Gina Salaris wanted to look for lightness, sweetness and beauty behind the sad and horrible facts of life. These will be joined by large-scale, integrated artworks, combining different means of expression.
Gina Salaris's product design is bold and inventive, often coming up with new solutions, whether it's making art or designing glassware.
“I don't feel that there are failures, because they are lessons for the next steps and, therefore, valuable.” she says.
Salaris works together with her workshop team in Nuutajärvi Glass Village in Finland. The unique works are handcrafted by using a variety of glassmaking techniques, such as blowing, casting and moulding. She works on the surface of the glass by etching, sandblasting, silvering and gilding.
Gina Salaris graduated as a glass designer from Häme University of Applied Sciences in 2004 and has worked with glass for almost 20 years.
Gina's work has been presented not only in Finland, but also in group exhibitions in South Korea, France, Germany, Slovenia, Slovakia and Estonia.
Salaris's works have been exhibited in Finland and abroad, and she has works in several private collections and Finnish foundations.
As a new material alongside glass, Gina has brought recycled concrete. In concrete, he is fascinated by its roughness and at the same time smooth and warm feeling.
"Raw concrete combined with luxurious gilding is an interesting combination of the meeting of two different worlds, which in this time is particularly interesting."
