Chihuly Over Venice

But I love to feel events overlapping each other, crawling over one another like wet crabs in a basket.

Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

Tuesday, September 3

6:25 pm: Newark Airport, Alitalia gate.

Pat Driscoll and I depart for Venice. On the plane I'm reading about the Venetian love of pageantry in The World of Venice by Jan Morris.

The most memorable of all such galas was arranged for the visit of Henry the III of France, in 1574....As this fleet sailed accross the lagoon, glassblowers on a huge accompanying raft blew objects for the King's amusement, their furnace a gigantic marine monster that belched flame from its jaws and nostrils.

Wednesday, September 4

Noon: Marco Polo International Airport. Our arrival in the lagoon is by air, but seeking the most memorable efect, we ride a water taxi, a handsome wooden boat with center cabin and space to stand on deck and feel the sea beezes as the waters of the lagoon skim past, and serene Venice emerges on the horizon. Because we are staying near the San Samuele stop on the grand Canal, we enter Venice "the back way" through the narrow "Canale della Misericordia and Rio di San Felice, lined with builidings that look, to a New Yorker, like a flooded SoHo. We pass under the Rialto Bridge, emerging from the boat at a wooden pier, surprised to find Chihuly already there: just accross the Grand Canal, at Palazzeto Stern, a shining blue Chandelier, supported by four steel tubes, as if harpooned and held aloft. And in front, Michael Barnard with is video camera.

The small-town character of Venice (there are only 12, 355 acres of land in the entire Venetian lagoon, including the islands of Murano, Burano, Torcello, etc.) will prove to be essential to the experience of Chihuly Over Venice, providing all of us with an opportunity to visit and revisit the scuptures as if they were in our own backyards, and setting the stage for chance encounters with old friends and collegues in changing light and spectacular settings. This is brought home when, walking towwards St. Mark's Square in the early afternoon, Chihuly (dressed in a rusty pumkin color shirt and lime green trousers and wearing his famous painted shoes) calls out a greeting as we cross Campo San Moise. He's looking over the sites where the sculptures will be set out and leads us to a little courtyard on the Grand Canal.

2:00 pm: Campiello Remer. The team is finishing the only colorless glass Chandelier, made at Waterford in Ireland, most of the componants deeply wheel cut by the artisans at the factory. Just after we arrive, Dale is ready to leave again, needs a water taxi, one conveniently arriving in front of the square and discharging elegant couple, the man smoking a cigar: Angelica Huston and Robert Graham, in Venice for the film festival. Chihuly has been in an exhibition with Graham, a scuptor, and so they chat while I climb the stone staircase beside the courtyard and admire the view, the handsomely decorated apartment whose occupant is enjoying the Chandelier, its heavy cut glass facets breaking light beams into rainbow colors like a prism. That same evening we cross over the Rialto Bridge and Grand Canal to get a look at this sculpture at night, across the water, and discover an orange Chandelier at the fish market site. As we stand around it, a couple emerges from the night; she snaps a photograph, and they are gone.

Friday, Sept. 6

Afternoon: Campo della Salute. The square in front of the Baroque Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute, on the Giudecca, owns a spectacular view across the busy entrance of the Grand Canal toward St. Mark's Square and is filled at the moment with steel rods, glass spheres the color and shape of pink balloons or transparent melons, and the Seattle team. Parks Anderson, John Landon, Tom Lind, and team raise the steel pyramid of pipes that becomes first scaffolding and then support for the glass. A tiny metal pointer at the end of a plumb line aims straight towards the center of the earth, indicating the structure is in balance and ready to receive men and glass. Anderson and Landon climb up, a combination of mountaineers and monks, balance and concentration, as they try to ignore the surrounding crowds, media view and get on with their work. This is the tallest of the sculptures, 21-feet high, its backdrop the enormous church surmounted by orecchioni, buttersses for the dome that look like big ears or the spiral decorations of a Venetian vase. As Elena Bernardi on the team says, "It's better to sneak into this city than to jump right in on top; Venice allows you to be in it but you must be kind. This is a nice piece, it doesn't take away from La Salute: it's here, that's there." Behind me I overhear a collector: "I guess we all must retire to Venice some day."

Venice is the Grand Canyon of cities, its beauty overwelming, and still the Salute piece will turn out spectacularly well, one of the best, glowing in the sunset while interacting politely with the architecture and statues. Yet by 4:30 pm I hear from Parks Anderson that representatives of a literary event planned for the 14th (8 days away) have just appeared and that Salute will have to come down before then, even though Chihuly was granted a permit. General exasperation. But as the project director, Leslie Jackson, says: "They are concerened with their own media; they have a stage and it would block that. So we put it up, we take it down in a week. We have to take it down anyway." Everyone is too focused on the next site to dwell on the loss of such a beauty, now an ephemeral one, at Salute.

Saturday, Sept. 7

1:15 pm: In front of the medieval cloister of Sant'Apollonia. Dale and the project engineer, Nicola Ferrari, sit on steps leading to the canal behind the Doge's Palace, the Bridge of Sighs to their left, planning the Double Bridge site, the nest complicated one, the one the team has reserved for last. Chihuly:"Because the KCTS boat has to go anyway, we can go like this." Ferrari:"I can ask them to stop the traffic on the canal:" Chihuly:"Except gondolas. Beautiful gondolas!" as he motions to one that passes a yard away from us on the canal. Later, inside the cloister, the set up proceeds smoothly, Anderson and Chihuly working on the placement of the glass, Chihuly in Neptune pose lofting an intense blue horn shape form for Anderson to grab. The banter of the crew: "Hey Parks--the cameraman has got the steady cam on, Cool, Can he jog with it?" The bell metal sounds of glass against glass and steel against steel, the English-speaking woman who has brought her friends and says she comes here because it is peaceful, only to find it filed with "Americans!" Later, when I'm alone in the cloister I understand what she means, the icy blue of the sculpture amplifying the silence of remote places and times, creating a meditative center in the courtyard.

2:30 pm: A tall man with a white beard arrives, starts to give Chihuly a bear hug, spies the camera, says,"No -- wait," and changes positions so that the camera angle on Chihuly is better, Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet of PBS fame and a fan of Chihuly's work, is in Venice especially for this event, and as they chat I overhear someone:"That's good--when you get two guys who ares good at ad-libbing its always good."

7:50 pm: Fiore, near Campo Santo Stefano. Dinner with Park Anderson and his family, Anderson arrives late, speaking enthusiastically about a new site they have just selected, on a terrace overlooking the Grand Canal at the Balboni residence, near an extraordinary apartment designed by Carlo Scarpa, Venice's finest architect, He praises the Italian project engineer, Nicola Ferrari, asbur link to Venice: honest, indefatigable, professional."

Chihuly Over Venice is materializing! Anderson: "It's the 'you can do it' factor with Dale, Chihuly gives people permission to do their best." What about bringing American glass to Venice?" Wouldn't it be arrogant to just come here and try to overwhelm Venice? Descend on the city like a rock band? Chihuly Over Venice is like a kiss, a thank you from Dale for the nurturing Venice has given him." I ask Parks what he thinks is going through Dale's mind right now: "You feel the weight -- expense -- complication -- possible embarrassment -- you don't want to spend yourself into jeopardy, But the team disperses that fear: tribes work that way. Still, part of leadership is to hold that fear and deal with it alone."

As we speak, team members appear in the open door of the restaurant, stopping by for a moment on their way from the Salute site:"Is Chihuly still at Salute?" "No. He wouldn't stay there by himself." RussellJohnson, the photographer, is elated: "The sunset photos are the best since Finland." The same with the video crew,"We smoked it! Unbelievable. I've never seen glass look like that at sunset. We shot to the sun -- it was like John Landon handing up balls on fire," as he finished assembling the Chandelier. Dinner ends with a conversation between us and a transplanted American-in-Venice, a regular patron of Fiore, about the infamous Pink Floyd concert and how it ruined the city."That's what I say Venice is not -- people hanging on the lamps -- no respect. You have to respect everything."

Sunday, September 8

11:00 am: In the Campiello Barbaro. A little courtyard near the Guggenheim Foundation, one of the few installation sites where there are trees, and the green mirrored sculpture (composed of gourd shapes blown in Mexico) is going up in the midst of them. I'm aware of motion at a third-floor window above: a young man wearing a pale violet shirt and glasses with heavy black frames is watching us, his movements registered in miniature in each of the mirrored gourds of the sculpture, as if in the multifaceted eye of a giant insect. Chihuly has not yet arrived, and at noon I lunch with Michael Barnard and his friend Jillian Gotlib, a magician and guitarist. Barnard has taped Chihuly at the blowing sessions, so we talk about Finland, where it never really got dark and Dale was highly energized. I hear about a magical last moment there, with the team at a final party and Dale still out on the water with the glass. But then in Ireland Chihuly was down. I think artists try to grab the creative energy they need as it arcs between their moods, but it can't be an easy life.

After lunch, we return to find Chihuly at work, sunglasses over his eye patch. Leslie Jackson tells me that he spent the morning in the tub "rebirthing" himself, and now he's explaining to the camera that the Chandelier components are kept round so that rain won't stick to them, that the pod system allows the team to assemble the sculptures anywhere outdoors and provides legs around which parts of the sculpture can "lock" to keep it from twisting in the wind.

5:40 pm: Fondamenta Nuove. Chihuly is taking the team to dinner on the island of Burano, and I meet him at the ferry boat. He has a stack of newspapers, USA Today and the International Herald Tribtme, and we compare same-day front pages between the papers: which headlines are clearer, which stories did each choose to emphasize? It's a pastime, itself an editing process. The American presidential election is two months away, Dole versus Clinton, and we talk politics, discuss Clinton's cabinet choices. I remember an article in The New York Times that drew attention to Chihuly's painted shoes as one of the memorable fashion statements seen among those attending the state dinner for Boris Yeltsin at the White House. His feet cause him pain; to mitigate that and avoid surgery he has shoes made for him, and I suspect he paints them to improve their appearance.

Dale wishes we had Italian newspapers as well, to read about the film festival, and asks: "Who are the great Italian directors? Who are the great writers?" He clearly admires artists who change, citing Picasso:"How can you not change?" Again I question him about Chihuly Over Venice: Is it about art? media? performance? "I don't know what it is but I hope it's original." Passing a semi-deserted island in the lagoon, just a few houses surrounded by overgrown fields: romantic in an isolated way. Dale: "I used to think I wanted to live that way, but not now."

7:30 pm: At the restaurant on Burano. Our group occupies all the outdoor tables. I sit next to John Landon and take notes on a tiny yellow Post-it pad, proving that this form of media is less intrusive than video. "With 800 pounds of steel in the air, you're either energized or intimidated. Parks and I work better in dead silence. My bush experience helped with these structures: Idaho and Alaska, ten years as a logger and on a trap line. A pure world, no lies in the outback, no art of deception. It's where there is a purity to the objects -- they create themselves." Landon needs convincing about the integrity of art: the steel pods are meant to have a purity and directness of expression. "I'm much more secure looking down than up, like a bird. In the outback, I was in situations where I couldn't make mistakes -- the same with these structures. Even glass should have some risks, even at Salute: putting the last few glass pieces over the top was the kind of risk needed. It's an edgy experience, digging around the glass up in the air on a 2-foot board." As we speak, I hear Tom Hodgson, Russell Johnson's assistant, who has brought his guitar, singing quietly,"Love is kind of crazy with a spooky little girl like you." As the good food arrives, the conversation drifts, and I ask John about his accident: "I took a new Cadillac over a 100-foot cliff. I would do it over again...an incredible learning experience. Life is a delicate thing. It doesn't take much to take it." Later in the week, at the publication party at Louisa Berndt's gallery for Tina Oldknow's book about the 25-year history of the Pilchuck Glass School, I'll turn to page 67 and a dramatic photograph captioned: "John Landon eats dinner off the end of a machete" during Pilchuck's first, primitive year of life. On the opposite page, Toots Zynsky recalls that "Landon built this beautiful tipi.. .. It was magical, it was so beautiful."