Internationally Renowned Artist Dale Chihuly Designs Oceana 2003 Partners Award | Oceana

Internationally Renowned Artist Dale Chihuly Designs Oceana 2003 Partners Award

Press Release Date: October 6, 2009

Location: Los Angeles

Contact:

Anna Baxter | email: abaxter@oceana.org
Anna Baxter

Internationally renowned glassblower Dale Chihuly has contributed four of his specially-blown Seaforms for Oceana to present as awards at its first annual Partners Award Dinner this Wednesday in Los Angeles.  Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Producer Brian Grazer and Director Ron Howard will be on hand to receive 2003 Oceana Partners Awards, while ocean explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau will be given the first ever Ocean Hero Award.

“We are elated that Dale Chihuly, an artist of immense talent and stature, designed the Oceana 2003 Partners Award,” said Oceana CEO Andrew Sharpless.  “His creations are as inspiring as they are imaginative and beautiful.”

The 2003 Partners Award is a specially-blown Seaform, one of Chihuly’s best known series:  “I love to walk along the beach and go to the ocean,” said Chihuly of his Seaform series.  “And glass itself, of course, is so much like water.  If you let it go on its own, it almost ends up looking like something that came from the sea.”

Chihuly, who studied in Venice and co-founded the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, has created many well-known series of works, perhaps most notably “Chihuly over Venice,” an unprecedented public art project in which glass sculptures were mounted over the canals and piazze of Venice using glass blown in Finland, Italy, Mexico and the United States.  In 1999, Chihuly mounted his most ambitious exhibition to date: “Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000.”  Chihuly’s work can currently be seen in the collections of more than 200 museums worldwide, including at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California.

Oceana’s Partners Award Dinner will be the first since a 2002 merger with American Oceans Campaign, which was founded in 1987 by Ted Danson.  Its purpose is to honor individuals who have made outstanding contributions and personal commitments to preserving and protecting the world’s oceans.