"Attachments"
Leah Eskin

Italo Scanga was cooking one of his extravagant hot-plate lunches in his San Diego studio when he died July 27. The 69-year-old artist left a renowned and eclectic body of work, a generation of devoted students, and a brother (of choice): Dale Chihuly. Scanga's "Fear of Drinking," executed in cork, tree limb, child's top and bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild, stretches its long arms in the guest room at Chihuly's Seattle studio, still labeled "Italo's Room." "We drank a lot of good wine together," sighs Chihuly, apprentice, collaborator and friend to Scanga for nearly 35 years. "I didn't learn from Italo by watching him make art. I learned by watching him live." Chihuly's luminous large-scale glass sculptures -- sensuous as sea creatures, ripe fruit or full flowers--currently float, hang and sway inside the Garfield Park Conservatory. Chihuly, who considers Chicago his favorite American city, says he has always wanted to work inside a greenhouse, where nature, in controlled form, already thrives.