Cover image: Sabrina Dowling Giudici with Phyto at the 2025 The Venice Glass Week HUB image by svaldo Di Pietrantonio

Italian Australian glass artist Sabrina Dowling Giudici has long been a creative force in Western Australia’s Gascoyne Region, where she weaves together ecology, heritage, and storytelling through her distinctive kiln-formed glass. Drawing inspiration from the cellular world, lace-making traditions, and the natural rhythms of sea and land, Sabrina’s work transcends craft to become a dialogue about conservation and cultural connection.

From the saltwater stories of Carnarvon to the reflective canals of Venice, Sabrina Dowling Giudici continues to expand the boundaries of glass art as a vehicle for dialogue and change. Her practice, rooted in ecology, heritage, and transcultural connection, invites audiences to see glass not only as a medium of beauty, but as a lens through which we might better understand and care for the fragile systems that sustain us.

After debuting at The Venice Glass Week 2024 with SALTWATERS – a “storytelling” glass collection celebrating seagrasses as unsung heroes of the sea – she returned this year (13-21 September 2025) with Phyto, a striking installation that continues her mission of sparking conversations around sustainability.

Q: You grew up between Carnarvon and Rome before choosing the Gascoyne Region as your home. How has that transcultural upbringing shaped both your worldview and your creative practice?

A:  The Gascoyne is an arid land where desert meets the vast saltwaters of the Indian Ocean; a region that covers 135,074 km² yet has barely 9,000 residents. With Perth nearly a thousand kilometres away and the nearest towns hundreds of kilometres apart, the scale and isolation of this landscape are profound.

There is no glass school within 3,600 km of my home and no university science course within 1,000 km, so I am entirely self-taught which has been a blessing. My practice draws from an intimate connection with the land and the artisanal traditions of my Italian heritage:  lacemaking, textiles, food and medicinal plants, stonework, mosaic, construction, leatherwork, woodwork, and metalwork – the work of ‘making’ by my grandmothers and grandfathers.  I see my parents ‘making’ my whole life.

Q: In 1993 you shifted from business consulting to enterprise facilitation and arts event coordination. What was the turning point that made you commit to a creative path?

A: I’ve always been creative. The turning point was when my husband Tony and I started our regional development and planning practice. I decided to focus on the creative industries because of the dearth of expressing culture through the visual and performing arts in remote areas. I chose to commit to helping individual and group artists using my enterprise facilitation training and experience, to realise financially sustainable artistic practices and events.

Q: Your glass works are often described as narrative objects. How do you approach translating ecological and biological processes into tangible glass forms that tell a story?

A: I am an art-science communicator so, the start of my artistic process is always looking down a microscope, reading academic papers, or interviewing scientists. It then becomes clear to me what the essential visual elements that describe a species, or land or sea or sky scape are. These visual characteristics are the points I develop and consider which glass-making techniques will best suit the look I am after. It’s at that point that all rational considerations are suspended as I enter that mind and heart space where the beauty of the glass and the spirit of the storytelling, guide how the hands move as I position my crushed glass. This is the amazing point where the heart intent and the muscle movements align and unite, resulting in gorgeous aggregations of different glass chips, that give that terrazzo look to so many of my pieces.

Q: How did The Venice Glass Week HUB audiences respond to your new work? And what does it mean to be exhibiting in such a historic setting in the country of your birth?

A: It’s a surprise to hear comments from visitors who don’t realise the artist is mingling in the crowd! Repeatedly, the fascination is with the holes in the glass as this is not an aspect of the glass blowing technique. My thrill is when Venetian locals comment on how much it reminds them of Burano lace as my pattern inspiration is my own lace-making heritage in filet crochet. I think the white opaline glass is also an alluring aspect of the artwork too, as it captures the light and fractures it into deep orange-golden tones.

I am not Venetian but being in Italy where artisanal craft is deeply understood and appreciated, makes me feel like I belong; a culture where generations of ‘making’ is tacitly understood, creates a sense of collegiality that binds very strongly. I don’t have that in Australia except with my local Aboriginal friends.

Q: You use photomicrography to observe cellular patterns and then translate them into glass, weaving in family traditions of lacemaking and terrazzo – what excites you most about combining science with artisanal heritage?

A: That it can help people make sense of the point of my stories that all centre on the amazement with creation, the vitality of the natural world, our enmeshment with the natural world, especially for people who are highly urbanised.

When I can, I use a microscope to demonstrate how the unseen world becomes a window into new understandings about the consequences of how we live our daily lives. That is the choices we make that contribute to pollution, energy overuse, mineral and metal exploitation, and flagrant habitat destruction. It continues to surprise me when audience members let me know how they stop using normal sunscreens and seek out reef-safe ones.

Q: You’re one of only 50 international artists chosen for The Venice Glass Week HUB. What does it mean to you to represent Australia on this international stage?

A: Last year being the only Aussie there, I was focused om being a gracious ambassador albeit with an overt Western Australian focus. This year there were nine Australian glass artists. My approach makes me an outlier to the glass artist institutional experience. My eco-centred approach is earthy and small-focussed which is resonating with artists from other countries who are working in similarly themed spaces. My professional and personal satisfaction comes from engaging with artists who end up emboldened to pursue more nature-based approaches. It’s here where the seeds of collaboration start to sprout. There are a number I am engaged with right now, as a result. This international collegiality is where the real power of the Venice experience lies.

Q: You describe yourself as a Social Justice Geographer. How does that identity intersect with your glass practice and your desire to inspire conservation and “care of place”?

A: Distance and isolation from the rules and regulation makers who are disconnected from the ground in buildings that have mostly erased their local habitat are important people to connect with. Some do it with petitions and lobbying; I am part of a small group of people who reach in with artworks that hopefully call people back to the natural world to which we are all intrinsically drawn to.

Q: Through Aartworks and your work with your husband, Tony Dowling, you’ve restored heritage spaces and facilitated countless collaborations. Why is nurturing community and emerging artists as important to you as your own practice?

A: Relationships are vital to humanity. Connecting past generations to the now generation is how we flourish; this is what I witness and so it’s what I believe.

Q: When you imagine the future of your art and advocacy, what new directions or experiments do you hope to pursue, and what conversations do you most want your work to ignite?

A: To scale up the size of my artworks so that I can re-enter the public artworks realm. Equally, I want to be in intimate yarning spaces with my artworks being the conversation starters, and in more public places where the audience can consider my artwork topics in their own time, over time.

I still have a way to go with my saltwater storytelling. I don’t know if I can ever get back to my first love in the space sciences. That really is another conversation for another time.