Ceramics Books and Magazines

Chihuly Projects offers 200 full-page photographs (in supersaturated color) of 34 installations the Seattle artist created over a 30-year span for public and private clients, plus chatty comments by the artist and members of his staff. A fine essay by the art writer Barbara Rose places Chihuly's work in the context of contemporary art and his own life. (An eye injury in the mid-'70s precipitated his shift from blowing individual tabletop glass pieces to becoming the director of a team effort.) But the photographs tend to flatten out Chihuly's generous shapes, and the real-world settings of the sculptures are often so busy visually that, seen from the fixed vantage point of a still photo, they compete distractingly with the art. Although some pieces are shown in different stages of completion, it's hard to grasp how any given project actually comes together from start to finish.

A splashy book that seems to be trying to match the brio and outsized vision of its artist, Chihuly Projects serves primarily as an eye-popping general tour of work that ranges from a 70-by-30-foot ceiling for the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas to an outdoor "chandelier" (for a retreat in Washington State) with 1,200 handblown glass icicles--and an attached heater for melting snow to add hanging pendants of real ice. --Cathy Curtis

Product Description
Dale Chihuly's Adynamic, improbable, flamboyant, and ravishingly beautiful creations" (Booklist) have dazzled the public for over three decades, and have won him international fame as the premier artist working in glass today. His blown glass works are on display in more than 180 museums around the world. But perhaps nothing Chihuly has done can match the drama and emotional impact of his spectacular large-scale installations. These grand projects, their objectives and solutions, are the focus of this glorious volume.

From the resplendent towers in Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000 to the ceiling sculpture made of over 2,000 hand-blown forms in the lobby of the Bellagio Resort in Las Vegas, the audacity and inventiveness of Chihuly's vision comes across on every page. A splendid companion volume to Abrams' very successful Chihuly, which offered a general overview, this new book, with its focus on his most imposing creations and its essays by Barbara Rose and Dale M. Lanzone, will delight all art lovers, collectors, curators, and glass artists.

DALE CHIHULY (b. 1941) is recognized as the most important artist working in the medium of glass. He has won numerous awards and in 1986 became one of only four Americans to be honored by a one-man exhibition at the Muse des Arts Dcoratifs in the Louvre, Paris. Chihuly is co-founder of the Pilchuck Glass School outside Seattle, which draws students and teachers from around the globe.

BARBARA ROSE is an eminent art historian and critic.

DALE M. LANZONE is president of International Public Art/Marlborough and former director of the U.S. Federal Government's public art program.

200 illustrations in full color, 30 drawings, 83/4 x 12"