Luckily, Lucy Skaer is not superstitious. If she was she might have shuddered when a handler from Gander And White - who have been transporting precious art since before the second world war - picked up a packing tube containing her work and labelled it as "item number 13". Skaer's work is bound for the prestigious Venice Biennale,where,alongwithfiveother artists, she will be representing Scotland.

Would disaster befall "item number 13" - a large sheet of paper, part of a triptych - during transit to Italy? First, it would travel from Skaer's current Glasgow studio - two whitewashed rooms on the top floor of a crumbling block on the fringes of the city's financial district - to a temperature-controlled warehouse in London, transported in an 18-tonne Mercedes truck. Then it would be crated up and shipped over to Venice in a special container. Then, most likely, it would be floated up the city's network of canals to arrive at its final destination: Palazzo Zenobio in the Dorsoduro district, site of the Scottish pavilion.

Compared to some of the other works Gander And White have moved - including Antony Gormley's enormous metal sculptures - carrying a cardboard tube down to a truck must be a doddle. But when I suggest this to the handler, he furrows his brow. "We treat every piece of work as if it's priceless," he says, "whether it's an Old Master or a more modern piece."

If Skaer feels nervous bidding farewell to her piece, she does a good job of hiding it. "I feel really happy," she says. "Sometimes I've had to separate from a work a bit too soon, because it's going somewhere and perhaps gets sold and then I never see it again. But because I'm going over to Venice to install it, I don't feel like it is really finished yet."

Partly, that's because the final panel of the triptych isn't ready to be shipped yet; it lies on the floor of the room next door. Even isolated and unfinished, the image on the long roll of paper looks familiar. Skaer has taken an iconic 1830s woodcut by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai - Great Wave Off Kanagawa,showingahugestylised tsunami towering over Mount Fuji - and painstakingly recreated it on a much larger scale in repeated patterns of black felt-tip spirals and pencil-shaded squares. "It's a really recognisable image, almost as recognisable as the Mona Lisa, even though people rarely know who the artist is," she says. "I needed an image that's familiar because I'm expanding it beyond its usual boundaries so it becomes an engulfing thing."

Skaer will travel to Venice via Naples, and plans to complete the piece either in transit or when she arrives at the Palazzo Zenobio. "I really like carrying the process from the studio on into the space because you don't lose the connection with the work. I like to feel that I can alter it or change it there, so it's not really finished until I'm done."

Born in Cambridge in 1975, Skaer graduated from Glasgow School Of Art in 1997, and considers the city her base, though she's often on the move - after Naples and Venice, she'll make a pitstop in Skye for another installation. "I'm not someone who needs to feel really settled and comfortable in my surroundings to make things," she says. "I find it quite exciting to be thrown into a situation I don't really know."

AfterattendingthepasttwoVenice Biennales, Skaer is thrilled to be presenting thisyear."It'ssomethingthat'salways seemed very exciting from the outside," she says, "but the project changes subtly when you're involved in it. You become more embroiled in quite mundane things, the logistics of doing it all."

Partly, that means getting the rest of her work to Venice. As well as the Hokusai triptych, she has been inlaying the surface of a smallantiquemahoganytablewith mother-of-pearl. It seems like an appropriate match of materials, until you realise that the pearl describes a startling diagrammatic picture of teeth, halfway between a happy grin and a dentist's X-ray. She's also created another small mahogany sculpture using an industrial waterjet process used to fashion stainless steel. The two pieces are currently in a friend's studio on the southside awaiting travel arrangements.

"There'sanothershipmentofTony Swain's work going out to Venice and I was going to try to piggyback with that but I don't want to rush the finishing of the table," she explains. "The people who do these traditional things don't have that deadline mentality. You can't say to them, Finish the French polishing! Go, go, go!'"

In the end, the works will probably be sent by Federal Express. And the very last piece, that final triptych panel, will travel with Skaer herself. "I like hand-carrying my work so if I do get stopped at Customs I can negotiate bringing the work through rather than just have it sitting in some quarantine space." Has she ever lost a piece in transit?

"I've lost drawings before but not permanently. You have this horrible experience of waiting by the luggage carousel and it doesn't come out." She smiles. "But then it's nearly always in the outsize luggage section with loads of skis."

The Venice Biennale runs from June 10-September 2 www.scotlandandvenicebiennale.com