CONTENTS
Flourishing on the Edge
William Warmus
THE FIGURE
Chaos and Space in the Figure
Maricruz Patiño
WIND, FIRE, AND TIME – THE DOME OF LIGHT
The Story of Love and a Symphony of Light
Pearl Chou
COMMISSIONED WORKS
DIVINITY IN LIGHT –
THE DOME OF SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGELI E DEI MARTIRI
New Light in a Classical Space
Rosa Barovier Mentasti
THE COSMOLIGHTSPHERE
A Brief Essay on Light
Narcissus Quagliata
TECHNIQUE
Reflections in the Storm: Quagliata at Bullseye
Lani McGregor
BIOGRAPHY
Navigating by the Stars
Neil Hassall
A Personal Statement
Narcissus Quagliata

ARNOLDSCHE Art Publishers
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A comprehensive overview of works with contributions by internationally renowned authors as well as 355 brilliant colour illustrations of Narcissus Quagliata’s oeuvre result in a perfect symbiosis of glass art, architecture, and painting.

THE ARTIST
Narcissus Quagliata (b. 1942) was guided towards painting as a young boy through his encounter with and the subsequent informal instruction from Giorgio de Chirico. He completed his studies in fine art at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Very early on he discovered that the unique relationship of glass to light was a suitable medium with which to express himself and so began his voyage of exploration, combining painting with light. His passionate curiosity about the very nature of the material led to a decade of collaboration with the Bullseye Glass Company, developing new materials and the groundbreaking methods with which they could be utilized.
The themes of his works are the beauty of light, the presentation of time, and the exploration of the human figure.

With his original glassworks and spectacular watercolours, he creates his own artistic vocabulary, evoking human archetypes invaded by fire, sea, stars, wind, and emptiness. His best known public artworks are Wind, Fire, and Time in Kaohsiung Taiwan, a thirty-meter-diameter glass dome, a rich narrative of the human experience bathed in light, today a landmark on the island; and Divinity in Light, a glass dome that sheds new light on the rotunda of the famous basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome, the last architectural work by Michelangelo.

This project is internationally recognized for its unique blend of art and science, with advanced optical lenses in the artwork bringing the sun and its eclipses into the basilica.
His exquisite glass artworks and watercolours are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Renwick Gallery in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, the Oakland Museum of California, the De Young Museum of San Francisco, and the Yokohama Museum of Art as well as in the collection of the South East Cultural Foundation in Taiwan, among others.

AUTHORS
Rosa Barovier Mentasti is a freelance scholar and curator and is specialized in the field of Venetian and contemporary international glass. She is the author of landmark books on the subject, such as a critical edition of Antonio Neri’s Arte Vetraria, as well as the publications Murano, l’isola dei vetrai and Trasparenze e riflessi: Il vetro italiano nella pittura.
Pearl Chou was born in China, finished her college education in Taiwan, and received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. She was appointed as the director of the World Trade Center in Baltimore, returned to Taiwan and worked for the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corporation as the planning director of public art.
Maricruz Patiño is a recognized writer, poet, and essayist and received the national prize for poetry ‘Efraín Huerta’. She has published various books of poetry, such as a collection of Spanish language women poets in the Americas.
Maricruz Patiño is a professor of poetry in the School for Writers in Mexico City and the director of the cultural centre in Valle de Bravo, Mexico.
William Warmus is an independent curator and critic. The art historian is the former curator of The Corning Museum Of Glass, and former editor of Glass magazine. William Warmus is consulting curator to the National Liberty Museum and received the AACG award. He is the author of numerous books and essays, including biographies of Dale Chihuly, Louis C. Tiffany, and René Lalique.

This – as usually – well-made book by Arnoldsche is divided in chapters as The Figure; Wind, Fire, And Time – The Dome of Light; Commissioned works; Divinity in Light – The Dome of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri; The Cosmolightsphere; Technique; Biography, written by the authors mentioned above. By the well-chosen paper, layout and photos the glass and light come out well.
With photos of the process of making, of details of the light effects, the designs and sketches to understand the concepts, the material used like the rondelles, frits, enamels and stringers, bevelled and glazed details, flash fusing glass and testimonials by the different collaborating craftspeople from different glass ateliers complete the book.
A book not to be missed in a library because Quagliata is one of the founding fathers of glass in architecture where space and light are always the leading aspects.
Angela van der Burght