"Dale Chihuly: 365 Days", Abrams, New York, 2008.
Viewers to this site know of my love affair with glass. There is a magic to that material that nothing else seems to capture in quite the same way. From time to time I collect glass art, I visit studios, I devour the books. So it should come as no surprise that I have long admired the glass artistry of Dale Chihuly. Indeed he is one of the prime movers behind the emergence of the studio art glass movement of the 1970's, the other two being Marvin Lipofsky and Harvey Littleton. Littleton's works are august, elegant, restrained. Lipofsky's are sensuous and organic. Chihuly is the P.T.Barnum of the three.
There have been numerous books about Chihuly, usually describing a particular series. This is the first book I have seen that attempts to cover his career, with comments by the artist. It is a thick, chunky volume, rather small and therefore easy to carry. As you would expect from an Abrams book, the color is magnificent, the reproductions seductive, the presentation elegant.
Chihuly tells us that he discovered glass-blowing purely by accident in 1962 while working toward a degree in interior architecture in Seattle. He applied for a Fulbright Scholarship in weaving. Rejected by Finland because he didn't have institutional backing there, he subsequently contacted factories in Italy to study glass-making and wound up in Venini. In 1971 he started an experimental glass facility, the Pilchuck Glass School, with friends and later spent 12 years at the Rhode Island School of Design. For the first 14 years of his career in glass he sold practically nothing.
Chihuly reveals that he draws on glass or over rice and beans. He loves the element of chance, the feeling of immediacy that he gets from drawing. He established his permanent studio and residence on Lake Union outside of Seattle in 1982 and called it "The Boathouse" - if you haven't visited it you are missing a treat. Of his teaching, he says, "You don't teach art, that's the last thing you'd ever teach - how to make art. All you have to do is set up the environment and it happens". Watching the presentation of his work, you begin to understand how each series evolved. He describes his method as follows: "I take thoughts from everybody, ideas from everybody, opinions from everybody. Then, ultimately, I draw my own conclusions. It's just a process, a way of working."
In discussing his background, Chihuly describes his father as a coal miner turned meat cutter turned union organizer, his mother as a housewife who took to bartending after the death of her husband. He admits that he is fascinated by the quirky - a glass chandelier so glowing that people thought it was on fire, frozen neon tubes under an ice-skating rink, a project to utilize every single color rod available. He certainly disproved the myth that glass cannot be used in large projects - his installations are huge and spectacular both outdoors and in. There are some who dislike his showmnanship, but that quality has put the American Studio Glass movement on the map and provided an inspiration for others to follow. This is a book that offers hours of pleasure.
c. Corinne Whitaker 2008
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