Chihuly Over Venice

Book excerpt: Bound like an artist's sketchbook this book documents the culmination of this amazing artistic odyssey that took the artist from his Seattle Boathouse hot shop to Nuutajarvi, Finland; Waterford, Ireland; Monterrey, Mexico; and finally Venice to blow glass. In the factories in those locations, Chihuly and his team of American glass blowers worked with native artisans more accustomed to making functional objects than art. Together they created the 14 chandeliers that graced the campos and canals of Venice for a remarkable time in September 1996. In her essay Dana Self, curator of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, muses on the relationship of Chihuly's glass and 'The Spectacle of Beauty'. She concludes that Chihuly's fantastical explorations demonstrate that beauty does produce a meaningful experience of the world. Writer William Warmus chronicles the culmination of this two-year project with his diary entries. Full-colour photographs record for readers the installations as they were assembled. An extensive chronology traces the artist's career.