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Dale Chihuly
Master Glass Artist
Dale Chihuly: A couple of years ago, I started thinking about hanging chandeliers over the canals of Venice. At the same time, almost, I thought I'd like to go to different countries and do this. And at the same time, I also thought it would make an interesting movie. So the idea just sort of went boom, boom, boom. Chandeliers over the canals, several countries, a film showing the whole thing. I thought about the idea, and I just went ahead and did it. That's one thing that you have to be able to do, I think, if you want to really reach high points, is you've got to take the idea and go, knowing, of course, that it can fail. But never thinking I've never once thought about this thing as failing, even though I'll tell you at the end of the story some of the problems we're having. But we went first to Finland, with 30 people from the Boathouse, my studio, and we worked hand-in-hand with the Finns to make chandeliers, but then when I got there I started doing some other things as well. 'Cause I'm constantly changing my mind about what I want to do. Then we went to Ireland. Then we went to Mexico. And now we're about to go to Venice to hang these chandeliers --15 or 20 of them -- over the canals of Venice.
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Dale Chihuly
Master Glass Artist
I was in a restaurant in Barcelona, a little kind of Italian restaurant, and it had some Venetian chandeliers in the restaurant. I walked in and I was looking right at a chandelier, sort of at eye level -- normally they're overhead -- but then when you sat down on the table you could look underneath it and have your meal, and it sort of acted as a centerpiece for the table. I'd thought about chandeliers before, but I didn't want to make a light fixture really. It didn't interest me to make something that was going to look like a light fixture or a decoration. And when I saw that chandelier at eye level, which this restaurateur had figured out would be a nice way to decorate his restaurant, I put that away, that this might work. And then later on, I decided to do a chandelier, and I put it not only at eye level, I put it almost floor-to-ceiling. And I made very simple parts. The parts for the chandeliers -- which sometimes are as many as 3,000 parts -- are just simple blown parts that a beginner could almost make. Then we just wire on some wire on the end, and you hook them onto a steel armature, so you put the first one on and the second. So the whole piece, the chandeliers, could be made by almost anybody, yet nobody had thought about -- except for this restaurateur -- thought about putting a chandelier at eye level.
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Dale Chihuly
Master Glass Artist
Dale Chihuly: One of the problems in working with glass is that, because glass is so beautiful, and almost no matter what color it is, it's gorgeous, so no matter what you make, people are interested in it. So, in a funny way, you can get away with a lot, because just put the glass out there and people are going to be attracted to it. And the fact that it's so beautiful doesn't work for everything you're trying, for a certain type of thing -- statement you want to make, or concept you have -- glass might not work. Unless you're interested in beauty. Fortunately, that interests me a lot, the idea of making things that make people feel good and give a lot of joy to a lot of people. We talked earlier about the idea of working and not ever having anyone see or appreciate what you're making. And artists have worked, sometimes, their whole life that way, in total seclusion. I can't imagine that would be very fun. But for me, not long after I was able to make things that people were interested in seeing -- I was lucky it happened to me soon -- but the more I was able to make that interested people, the more I wanted to interest people. I was really, maybe to a fault, interested in being able to do exhibitions that would have a wide appeal. I like it when a lot of people enjoy what I'm doing. On the other hand, I am capable of making things that people don't like! But I like it better when they do like it. Or I like it better that -- eventually, what I'm making -- that they will like, and under some context it works. What I'm doing here, at the Academy, we're hanging six chandeliers for the banquet, and these chandeliers, which I started making four years ago, initially were not very appreciated, for whatever reason. In that case I didn't pay much attention to that, and within a couple of years, people started getting interested. And now, when they see them, they like them more. Part of that is just the familiarity of seeing something. You can't always expect people to like it the first time.
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Johnnetta Cole
Past President of Spelman College
George Eaton Simpson, who I am still in very close touch with, in his 90s, stood up, this tall, lanky, white American man, and he put a record on the record player, started to simulate hyperventilation. Music was playing, which I learned later was the music of Jamaican cults, and he began to hyperventilate in a simulated way, to move to the music and to talk about what were the retentions of African culture in the New World ways of Black folk.
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Francis Collins
Presidential Medal of Freedom
In that first few months as a medical student I remember a day just as clear as if it was yesterday, where a pediatrician came to talk to us, and he brought with him a couple of patients who had genetic diseases. And it was so powerful to see the consequences of a small change in this wonderful molecule called DNA. Just one letter out of place causing a disease like sickle cell anemia, which was one of the individuals that he brought, or galacticemia, a newborn baby that he brought to class. And that, maybe because it also appealed to the mathematical part of me that liked the precision of DNA and its coding capacity -- it's a digital molecule after all -- made it so clear at that moment, that day, that's what I want to do.
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Francis Collins
Presidential Medal of Freedom
As a geneticist, I look forward to the time when we can say -- because we'll have all the data -- that race doesn't really exist. It may be a social construct, it may be a cultural construct, but it sure ain't a scientific construct. And I think we already know that in some generalities, but we'll know that in detail pretty soon. And that will be good, because I think that is a chronic sore on our culture that we are unwilling to cope with. And for the 21st century, if we could focus on that as our highest priority, that would be wonderful.
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Francis Collins
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Somebody pointed me towards C.S. Lewis's little book called Mere Christianity, which took all of my arguments that I thought were so airtight about the fact that faith is just irrational, and proved them totally full of holes. And in fact, turned them around the other way, and convinced me that the choice to believe is actually the most rational conclusion when you look at the evidence around you. That was a shocking sort of revelation, and one that I fought bitterly for about a year and then finally decided to accept. And that's a book I go back to regularly, to dig through there for the truths that you find there, which are not truths that Lewis would claim he discovered for the first time, but he certainly expresses them in a very powerful way to somebody who is not willing to accept faith on an emotional basis, and I wasn't.
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