A little something about myself

Eat&Run: an introduction

Hi! My name is Michela Bortolozzi and I was born and bred in Venice, where I currently live and work as a designer.

The need of working with my hands was probably ingrained through my mother. When I was a little girl, in fact, she would send both me and my sister to summer camps, science for her and art for me, and she has always encouraged us to travel and experience the world as much as we could. As a consequence, wandering the globe has become a great passion of mine and I have been traveling, mostly alone and for long periods, since I was about 16 years old!

After finishing art school and graduating in Visual Arts in Venice, I attended a Master’s Degree in Sustainable Design in Marrakech, city that inspires a whole section of the Enjoy project. Then I worked in South Africa and Kenya, and collaborated with artists as production assistant in Copenhagen, Lisbon, and Venice.

Like everyone, the situation has temporarily put my travels in standby, but I am already making plans for the future! Anyway, whenever I can, I escape to the mountains and detach climbing as high as I can.

I have recently changed studio and you can find me in Campo do Mori (Venezia). This new situation has given me new energy and I wish to share more about the concept behind the project that is occupying most of my time: Eat&Run, which could maybe be summarised with the motto ‘sustainable design for a conscious and slow tourism’.

Living in a city like Venice, which has been shaped by mass tourism, I have witnessed the damage that unaware consumption can cause to the social tissue of a city. I moved from the concept of souvenir, an object we buy to remember a place or to give to another person to share something about our experience. In the past, people would associate that word with specific trades and crafts of the cities visited, made with care and passion and carrying century-long traditions.

Nowadays, instead, the word is often associated with cheap objects made in factories, often located in other continents. One of the goals of Eat&Run, in fact, is to make people think about the way we consume when we travel through art and in a fun and playful manner.

The first productions were lollipops. Made in the shapes of the columns of Palazzo Ducale and Ca’ d’Oro and recalling with their clear texture, our Murano Glass.

A lollipop as a metaphor of Venice, a city made by men with great craftsmanship, now in our hands: how will we consume it? Eat it until nothing is left, treasure it as a memory, or?

From the lollipops, I then decided to enlarge my collection and started making eco Candles, Brooches with recycled Murano glass, Earrings in sustainable materials, but also plates, ceramics, and prints inspired from my travels.

Every section of the collection is made with sustainable and recycled materials, often given to me by other designers and craftsmen. Just to give you a couple of examples, the brooches are designed assembling pieces of Murano glass that I collect along the beaches in Murano, whereas the wooden bases of the candles are made with leftover pieces of oarlocks from the workshop of Il Forcolaio Matto.

I will soon dedicate a post to each section, for now I just wanted to introduce myself and provide you with more information.

Objects carry several meanings and are powerful forms of communication and exchange, this is why I believe it is important to give back to local crafts their value. Our local traditions and their interpretation is what makes every city, small town, unique.

This diversity is a richness and we should preserve it.