When it reins, it pours. Plate LXIX, Royal Library, Windsor Castle, detail
The 12th Leonardo Benefit Thursday, April 6th 5:30 - 9pm Celebrate creativity. Enjoy fine champagne, and savor inventions from the creative kitchen of Doug Coffin. Support the the work of the Eli Whitney Museum through your presence and your purchase of artwork invented for this event. THE ELI WHITNEY MUSEUM • 915 WHITNEY AVE HAMDEN, CT • 203.777.1833
Madrid Ms. I, fol. 124v (detail)

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Chain
Chain is as ancient as Hepaestus, the artisan god of the forge. It is an essential tool of the blacksmith’s art. With rings and hooks of chain, a blacksmith tethers the world. Leonardo draws chains as he dissects the anatomy of invention.

Forge a link. Add to it. Multiply it. The sum or product will always be more than the parts. Rigid materials flex. Iron rises and falls in pounding waves to moor a ship. Gold cascades over a dancing shoulder. Forged beads blow across the page.

The image of chain is an essential tool of thinking. Chains bind and enslave. Chains connect and transmit. Chains inhibit or carry movements and ideas.

The Challenge
Bead chain serves us with such quiet grace that it is all but overlooked. Think links. Invent uncommon uses and meanings for this common connector. Pull at the images, ideas and implications of chain.

The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

Brown-Forman
Bead Industries
Lehman Brothers Engravers
Robert Lisak Photography

Artspace
Hamden Garden Center
Moka
Service Point