Strange Flower: Chilhuly in Miami, originally uploaded by laurenz

When I visited the Chihuly exposition in Miami’s Fairchild garden, I thought to myself: “no way that one man can do all this on his own”,
and it seems Chihuly has a number of other expositions going on at the same time.

It turns out that Chihuly has not blown glass for a long time, but is responsible for the artistic design.
Which brings us to an interesting law case, with Chihuly attempting to assert a copyright on “his” style of glass art and an assistant claiming co-authorship of several of the pieces.

Lots of interesting questions involved here: what makes these sculptures art? The technical perfection? The design, the context in which they are presented? Is it really possible to clearly define a “Chihuly style” that is different enough from other artisans’ work to be copyrighted?
Is “Chihuly” more of a brand name under which other artists’ works can be sold?
Or is glass blowing just a craft and not patentable at all? Especially since Chihuly himself imitates nature just like here in this object resembling a strange flower…

Many interesting questions - and here are some resources I found:

http://bluecrabboulevard.com/2006/06/01/can-you-copyright-nature/
http://www.copybites.com/2006/05/glass_artist_fi.html
http://theartlawblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/through-glass-darkly.html
http://madisonian.net/archives/2006/06/01/chihuly-glass-sculpture/

Regardless of the outcome of these law suits, I’ll vist the nexr Chihuly exposition that I come across…
all my Chihuly photos