Arts & Culture

Browsing the latest issue of American Craft, I learned that master glass artist, Dale Chihuly, turned 70 just as his ground-breaking Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle celebrated its 40th anniversary.

It's impossible to describe how breathtakingly beautiful this man's work is. He is associated with the post-war studio crafts movement, but to me he is the Van Gogh of silica and sand.

I've never seen anything so vibrant and unique and terrifyingly fragile as Dale Chihuly's sun burst. 

       The Sun at the New York Botanical Garden          Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun

It's hard to imagine that he began as a student of weaving and interior design.

Chihuly credits his time working at a glass factory in Venice, as well as his father's trade union background, and his kibbutz experience with the collaborative approach to making art he developed. " I realized that if you worked with half a dozen or more people, you could achieve things you could never do alone."  When you think of it, the old masters worked that way, too, but until Chihuly, most glass artists worked alone.

Here's a short video of team creation at work during a typical day at Pilchuck:

His Persian Ceiling, here exhibited at the de Young Museum in California, is as glorious an example as any of what you can achieve as a team.

Had I been there, I would have wanted to lie on my back and scoot along the floor just to take it all in. It looks like some fantastical coral reef.

What is it about glass that is so captivating? It's liquid and solid light, but there's something else, too.

In 2000 he held an exhibition at David's Tower in Jerusalem. It's documented in a DVD which TPL owns.  There's something moving about watching these monumental works being installed next to piles of ancient stone. Chihuly calls glass a vanitas symbol – something that reminds us of the fragility of human life. That's exactly it!  You're looking at something that could shatter in an instant which makes it all the more precious. 

And how does he install his works which often comprise thousands of individual pieces of glass?

This a time-lapsed clip of the installation of his fire and water chandelier:

(No stumblebums or fumble fingers on his team, I'm sure.)

Toronto Public Library owns books and DVDs on Chihuly and his magnificent work.

                          Chihuly                    The Art of Dale Chihuly        Chihuly: Form from Fire

                                                                          
            Gardens and Glass DVD    In the light of Jerusalem DVD    In the Hot Shop DVD

And the best is saved for last: a video overview of his 2008 exhibtion at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix: