Posted
on September 20, 2013
 |
Dale Chihuly's glass ceiling at the
Bellagio in Las Vegas. |
When
I was a kid, I was amazed by glass blowing. I don't remember seeing a
lot of glass blowers—perhaps just one of those guys in a shop who
creates tiny delicate horses and dragons and flowers while you watch.
I was so surprised that hard, breakable glass could be so flowy,
could be blown and plucked and carved and sculpted into so many different shapes!
As
an adult, I've been to some great glass places—from the Corning
Museum of Glass in New York to the Waterford Crystal Glass factory
tour in Ireland, from the demonstrations at Cal State Fullerton
College's glass blowing studio to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma,
Washington.
And
one of the standouts in some of these places is the glass art of Dale
Chihuly!
Chihuly
doesn't dabble around making inch-long dragons for little girls. Many
of his pieces are HUGE – a 30 foot (10 m) long chandelier, for
example, or a 15 foot tall (5 m) tower. And these aren't large flat
pieces – they are fully three dimensional.
Some of Chihuly's pieces
are representational (one may look like a crazy arrangement of
brightly colored flowers, for example), but others look like a more
abstract form of craziness. Twisting, bulbous, or ribbonlike, golden
or azure or grass green, the glass seems to be organic, growing,
living, moving things—but not necessarily anything you've ever seen
before!
One
of the most amazing Chihuly experiences I've ever had was walking
across his Bridge of Glass. We crossed a wide freeway on a
500-foot-long pedestrian overpass, from the Museum of Glass to the
old train station, where more Chihuly works are displayed. We passed
the Venetian Wall, where 109 of Chihuly's works are displayed—natural
light pouring through the glass wall, through the glass art, to our
delighted eyes—and we passed the 40-foot-tall Crystal Towers, which
looked like they'd been plucked from Superman's Fortress of Solitude.
Excited to spot the Chihuly windows of the train
station, we trotted over the last bit of the Glass Bridge – and it
was only on the return trip that we noticed the best part of all—a
ceiling of glowing, colorful “sea creatures” made of glass. To be
exact, there were 2,364 glass sculptures placed on top of the
50-by-20-foot plate-glass ceiling! And of course, the glass wasn't
literally glowing, but again, the natural light pouring down through
the glass was transfixing!
Chihuly
was born on this date in 1941, in Tacoma. I think it's very ironic
that this artist, who is considered THE preeminent glass artist in
the world, was badly injured by glass—but not by the glass he works
with! In 1976, he was in a car accident, and he flew through the
windshield. The glass cuts he suffered resulted in blindness in one
eye. Chihuly wears a black eye patch (and yes, he looks a bit like a
pirate!).
Three
years later, a bodysurfing accident left Chihuly unable to hold a
glass blowing pipe, so now he has to have assistants do work that he
directs. He has said that he is now "more
choreographer than dancer, more supervisor than participant, more
director than actor."
Also
on this date:
Plan
Ahead!
