Monday, November 13, 2006

TAM: how to clean a Chihuly chandelier

 

Cleaning Chihuly's Sculpture at Children's Museum No Easy Job

Oct 30, 2006 04:07 PM PST

By Steve Bray
News 8 @ 6:00

Have you seen the Fireworks of Glass sculpture at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis? It's 43 feet tall and contains 3,200 individually hand blown pieces of glass. And like all sculptures, it gets dusty. Cleaning it is a job that requires both physical strength and a delicate touch.

"Damaging one of the pieces, that's on your mind," said Scott Anderson of JRS International.

That is one concern of the man cleaning the sculpture designed by world renowned artist Dale  Chihuly.

"It's just a mental adjustment I think everyone's afraid of heights to a certain extent, but we clean 50 story towers in that chair," said Anderson.

He works four hour stints in a swing-like apparatus that he raises and lowers to move up and down the sculpture.

"Yeah, it gets a little tedious."

He works for JRS International, a company that cleans chandeliers and other works of art all over the world. Armed with duster and a repelling system, it's not just the fragile subject that makes this job tough.

"It's physically demanding on your body because you're constantly adjusting to try and pull yourself and keep yourself study," Anderson said.

Anderson says it will take about two days to get this project done and during that time period he'll get some funny looks and hear some interesting comments.

"The ladies will always say ‘hey that looks nice, can you come to my house?' And the guys will always say ‘hey, you missed a spot.'"

Anderson says he doesn't dust at home.

http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5610394

 


 

Museum unveils art twice

 

The Children's Museum [of Indianapolis] showed off how grown-up it could be Saturday during the black-tie gala celebrating the second unveiling of "Fireworks of Glass."

 

Hey, when you spend $4.5 million on a nine-ton glass sculpture, you can have as many unveilings as you want. The first one took place earlier in the day.

 

Artist Dale Chihuly told the crowd this was the first time he'd seen the huge piece all put together.

 

VIPs and big donors got to head directly to a Detail & Design/Gene Huddleston-inspired lounge area that was set up early for drinks and snacks.

 

For their $10,000 donation, table sponsors received a limited-edition Chihuly work to take home. Sponsors also got special bow ties and evening bags painted by the artist

 

Last edited by Merlion : 03-20-2006 at 06:24 PM.

 


 

 

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

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