Giulia Filippi. A Fishing Net for Snowflakes, 2009

Venetian Giulia Filippi has genarated an idea of a net of snowflakes that is made with bobbin lace. A Fishing Net for Snowflakes – from drawing to the lace, a thread that joins the community is done in collaboration with Giulia Filippi & Emelia lace association children’s lace course, Raumanmeri school 8th grade and Normaalikoulu 2nd grade students.

Snowflakes can be big clusters of snow crystals, or just one individual and unique crystal. There are no two snow crystals that are exactly alike, which is rather surprising when thinking of the amount of snow that falls. Snowflakes dissolve and change shape becoming water and after many years, snow again.

However, we can try to preserve them in our memories, or even invent them. Every snowflake is different like human being is, so there are infinite possibilities of shapes, stories and “realities”.

This project focused on two popular things in Rauma: lace and snowflakes. The purpose was to use a net as a web, made by various people working together, connecting different layers of the community. This net contained wishes, memories and fantasy, designed with a thread and space of shared possibilities.

The project was divided in two parts. It first involved the children from various age groups and schools in Rauma. They drew and made the design of the snowflakes, which were be done from thick yarn with bobbin lace technique. The pieces were connected together as a net. Rauma lace makers and the artist guided the children into the lace making and it’s knots.

The lace is not just a technique or a female habit purely decorative, it is a story of encounters and plots, is "science of the embrace" and sublime technique of knots and numbers. Diary of meetings, collection of all the possible shapes that every human can think about the World and the snowflakes specifically in this case.

Different aspects of snow has been fascinating Giulia Filippi for a long time. She has explored lace making near her hometown at Burano island, which is well known from lace as Rauma is. Burano lace differs from Rauma lace, so Filippi joined a lace making course at Rauma Adult Education Centre to learn a new technique.

Filippi studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti and will finish her studies in spring 2010. First part of the year 2009 she spend at the Lahti University of Applied Arts and at the Kemijärvi A.i.R. In 2008 she started a project called "Lumen sanakirja" (dirctionary of a snow) which is found at http://lumensanakirja.blogspot.com/

Filippi has guided several workshops with children in Italy. Artworks by Buranese children and A Fishing Net for Snowflakes from Rauma will be installed to an exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim museum in April 2010.