By Douglas Kalajian

Dale Chihuly's delicate, blown-glass artwork graces museums and elegant buildings around the world, but it is less abundant in his hometown of Seattle since February 28, 2001.

A powerful earthquake shook Puget Sound that morning, injuring 400 people and causing more than $2 billion in damage. Seattle's dozens of glass-art galleries were-there is just no other way to put this-shattered. Art losses were estimated in the millions.

News accounts focused on Chihuly. One of his works, valued at $40,000, tumbled to the floor of the Seattle Sheraton. A reporter asked what could be done with the shards. "You throw them away," one of the artist's associates answered, adding that no one would "sit there and try to glue it together."

Jonathan Mandell, a Philadelphia mosaic artist who spends much of the year with family in Palm Beach and Boca Raton, had a more ambitious idea. When he read about the earthquake damage, he wondered if the remains of some Chihuly works could be reconstituted as altogether different art.

Mandell contacted Chihuly through their mutual friend and publicist, Mike Venema. Chihuly's reply arrived in three crates.

"I spread it all out on the studio floor," Mandell says. "There were just buckets full of broken glass. Different shapes, different colors." Some were so big he had to break them apart. None could just be jigsaw-puzzled into place.

"Glass is very challenging to work with," says Mandell, 40. "Each piece has to be cut on a tile saw. These are broken vessels, so they're not flat. Some are concave, some are convex. You have to work to resolve that."

Mandell usually works in ceramic tile, creating highly detailed scenes that require "a lot of time with tweezers." Much of his work is Judaic, recalling ancient religious tile work. Other pieces are whimsical, while some reflect the inner sports fan, such as his 8-foot-tall mosaic of Wilt Chamberlain.

He managed to work Chihuly's broken bits into two, wall-mounted glass mosaics. He created a third from shattered glass lent by another Seattle artist. The tiles-Nisqually I, II, and III-recall the earthquake that was centered in the Nisqually River delta.

On his latest visit to Boca Raton, Mandell brought Nisqually III for exhibit and possible sale at the Elaine Baker Gallery. The work combines Chihuly's floor sweepings with seashells, blue lace agate, and other material into a South Florida landscape. The work is clearly interpretive "but not very complicated," according to Mandell. "it's just images of flowers," he says. "There's a rich landscape down here and this is my observation of it."

The price of Mandell's observation: $10,000. A portion (Mandell says the amount is undetermined) will go to a fund that's helping Seattle craft artists who lost works in the earthquake.

Mandell sent photographs of his Nisqually series to Chihuly, but the two artists haven't spoken about it.

"I heard from his studio that he was pleased," Mandell says. "He must have liked it. He sent me more broken glass."

Kalajian, Douglas. "Revival of the Fittest: Shattered Art Gets a New Life," The Palm Beach Post, February 24, 2002, p. 1K.