Anna Olivella Casas. Escola Massana Centre d'Art i Disseny New Talents Award Nominee 2026

Name of graduation student: Anna Olivella Casas
Name of guiding teacher: Maria Díez, Paula Arellano, Mireia Estopà, Ester Madurga and Laura Roig

Nominated by Escola Massana Centre d'Art i Disseny.


Anna is a student who is deeply involved in all her projects. She shows an inexhaustible curiosity to understand how materials can be transformed through different physical and chemical processes, always in search of unexpected results and new expressive languages.

For some time now, glass has become the center of her research. From this material, she initiates processes of experimentation and dialogue with the material. Her practice reminds me of a scientist in her laboratory. When faced with the material, she adopts an attitude of observation, experimentation and analysis that leads her to formulate questions and explore multiple ways of resolution. Her work table often becomes a constellation of tests and trials, a visible trace of a process based on curiosity and trial and error as a driver of knowledge.

In her pieces, glass rarely manifests itself through the attributes that usually identify it. Transparency and translucency give way to textures, opacities and complex surfaces that challenge the gaze and reveal a lesser-known dimension of this material. Based on this extensive work of material research, Anna builds surprising compositions, playing with both contrast and harmony between the elements.

The results are pieces of jewelry with great visual and material richness, which demonstrate sensitivity, and a remarkable capacity to generate a language of her own through experimentation. This combination of research, perseverance and creative capacity makes her work stand out for its uniqueness and maturity. / Maria Diez Serrat


Artist statement:

Després de tot (After All) is a material research project developed during my final year of the Higher Vocational Training in Artistic Jewellery at Escola d'Art i Disseny La Massana, Barcelona. It investigates transformation as both subject and working method: what happens to a material when fire, time and repeated failure are accepted as part of the process.

My work begins in the studio, through a laboratory-like process of trial and error with glass. Rather than searching for transparency or clarity, I am drawn to the moments when the material becomes unrecognisable — porous, foamed, eroded, vitrified — closer to a fossil or a fragment than to glass itself.

Drawing loosely on archaeology, on objects that survive only as remains, altered beyond their original form, I build pieces that read less as finished objects than as evidence of a process. The project grew out of a persistent interest in the behaviour of materials under extreme conditions. Rather than seeking predetermined results, the work developed through careful observation of what each material revealed when pushed beyond control. Failure was not an obstacle but a source of information: fragments that did not survive intact were preserved and reintroduced into later pieces, becoming part of the project's material vocabulary.

The investigation unfolds through four interconnected series — Després de la Llum, El Devenir, Cos de Cendra and Quan la Cendra Floreix — each expanding on the possibilities revealed by the one before. It began with explorations of organic, iridescent colour on metal through pigment and flame, focused on how heat could alter and activate a surface.

El Devenir introduced Bullseye pâte-de-verre and volcanic sand as primary materials: fired fragments were generated, collected and recombined with porcelain and glass, building pieces through accumulation, layering and material dialogue. Cos de Cendra moved towards the interaction between glass and porcelain, introducing glass directly into the porcelain body and firing both together at 1200°C — not to test compatibility, but to see what new forms and textures could emerge when materials with different behaviours were subjected to the same conditions. Quan la Cendra Floreix turned to foamed Bullseye glass, letting the kiln become an active participant in the process: heat generated organic, unpredictable structures whose forms emerged through transformation rather than design.

The techniques employed across the project include Bullseye pâte-de-verre, borosilicate lampworking, kilnformed and foamed glass, porcelain, and metalwork with flame and pigment patina. Materials were not chosen in advance; they were recognised in the process, as the ones that had already crossed a threshold. Each of the fifteen pieces in After All carries the visible trace of its own making. Nothing is corrected or concealed.

The jewellery becomes a record — not of what the material was, but of what it went through to arrive at what it is now. This is the way of working I intend to continue: staying close to the material, accepting what the fire decides, and building from there.


Contact:
Mail: nitaolivella@gmail.com olivella.anac@escolamassana.cat 
Instagram: @annaolivella.lab


Find out more about Escola Massana Centre d'Art i Disseny.