Brinker has been called the - mutual fund of casual dining - stemming from its powerful and unprecedented portfolio of outstanding concepts which includes Chili's Grill Bar, Romano's Macaroni Grill, On The Border Mexican Grill Cantina, Maggiano's Little Italy, Corner Bakery Cafe, Big Bowl Asian Kitchen and Rockfish Seafood Grill.

Founded in 1975, Brinker has grown to over 1,400 restaurants worldwide with 90,000 employees and system-wide sales exceeding $3 billion annually.

John Wyatt - VP of Concept development for the Maggiano's chain of restaurants was eager to commemorate the opening of the first Maggiano's
restaurant in Las Vegas. In the startup of any new operation there are key players ; and this being the final restaurant opening of the 2004 calendar year for Maggiano's he wanted to recognize the efforts and significance of the Brinker's founders Jonathan Fox and Mark Tormey.

He asked Fire-N-Light managing artist Patrick Scanlon to create two "trophies" that he could present to them at the opening event.

Artist statement
The Maggiano's restaurants serve higher end Italian fare and and has a distinct font heavy logo. I wanted to feature the logo in the glass pieces I created because it is one thing to see your logo on paper...On a sign or in print. It is quite another to be holding a 12.5" x 3" x 3.5" solid block of art glass with it!

In addition, I wanted to show some of the tradition of Italian art glass in the pieces - color and surprise.

I settled on a design that used the entire logo in a cast glass piece withbrightly colored marini, (small multi colored glass rods cut into tiny cylindrical inclusions), spread randomly throughout the piece as the hot glass was being poured from the ladle. Giving the piece a freedom of expression and expressiveness - yet fitting inside the structure of the actual Maggiano's logo.

To make the piece I used a digital file sent to a local stamp making companyto create an extra deep relief mold of the logo itself which I then attachedto a 3" x 13" x 4" block of wood. Using that combination as the mold I chose traditional sand casting as the working medium as I also wanted to contrast the slightly rough nature of that process with the clear and colorful aspects of the front view of the trophies. I then sand blasted the recipients names onto the front of the pieces and we created a hand made velvet bag with a draw string so that John had a complete "gift" with which to honor Mark & Jonathan.