Interview: Dale Chihuly
Splendor in the Glass
By Patty Jerde, Private Clubs Magazine Online
Dale Chihuly reflects on his art and future.
Dale Chihuly
What appears to be unique and magical, however, is not so much the material but its transformation at the hands of Chihuly, who has taken glassblowing to dramatic new dimensions — most recently with his largest project to date, an impressive glass ceiling for the new and highly publicized Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.
Still, it wasn’t until he had earned a degree in interior design from the University of Washington that glass took precedence in Chihuly’s life. In 1967, he enrolled in the innovative glass curriculum at the University of Wisconsin — just as glass was emerging as an art form. Chihuly’s talent quickly put him at the forefront of the Studio Glassblowing Movement.
Even when a 1976 automobile accident left him without sight in one eye, depth perception, and the ability to blow his own glass, his career flourished. He now oversees a team of glassblowers at the Boathouse, his residential studio on Seattle’s Lake Union, where he carefully orchestrates the process to reflect his artistic vision. Through colorful energetic paintings on canvas to rough drawings sent via fax machines, Chihuly relays his ideas to the staff from all over the world. He continues the supervision in the studio hotshop, where each installation reaches full-scale mock-up before being shipped to a particular site.
Chihuly’s projects tend to grow epic in proportion. No shape is too complex, no color too vivid, no project too huge for the Cecil B. De Mille of glass art. Some of his grandest installations include Chihuly Over Venice, a series of “chandeliers” suspended above the canals of Venice; Niijima Floats, a traveling installation of richly colored spheres up to four feet in diameter and lit from the inside with neon or fiber optics; and 35-foot-high sets for the Seattle Opera’s production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
His pieces are displayed in more than 150 museums worldwide, including the Louvre’s Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. In addition, his work has been acquired by Queen Elizabeth II, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Elton John, and Bill Gates. He has been honored with two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and, in 1992, he was named the first National Living Treasure in the United States.
Chihuly’s energy, and his interests, seem endless. He is an avid collector — of almost anything vintage — and along with glass pieces, the shelves of his studio are lined with wooden decoy ducks, suitcases, and birdhouses. Before this conversation began, he greeted a young student he sponsors at the Pilchuck Glass School near Seattle (which he helped found in 1971). Chihuly met her while blowing glass on a Japanese island. She spoke very little English but he knowingly and graciously accepted a gift while volunteering his bicycle for her use during her Seattle stay. Then he settled into a comfortable leather chair in his private living quarters at the Boathouse to talk with Private Clubs.
You were studying interior design and architecture at the University of Washington and you started to experiment with glass in your basement. How did that come about?
I think most people are attracted to glass. If not the glass, the form, or the color, or something. From what I remember, for me it was the love of glass.
I started fusing it and weaving it into tapestries and then I started making murals of glass. One night, I just melted some glass and got a pipe, not a regular blowpipe, just a pipe and a little bubble. From that point, I wanted to be a glassblower.
When you began your graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, glassblowing wasn’t considered an art form. It was more of a craft. When you went into the school, were you thinking art or craft?
That’s an interesting question. When I went out there to blow glass, I don’t think I had any idea what I was going to do. All I know is that for a couple of weeks I learned how to blow a vase and then I instantly got attracted to doing sculptural things and so I began doing what were considered radical things with glass. When I quit blowing glass and made the transition over to just running the team, that didn’t bother me because I am really interested in the final piece far more than the making of it.
You now have a growing company. Do you consider yourself an artist and a businessman?
I never actually consider what I am. Nor do I really reflect much on what I’ve done. Nor do I think too much about what I will do. Not that I necessarily live in the moment, but I don’t think of what I’ve done as how important it is or where my position is in terms of the history of glass or whatever and very often I think the opposite. Like I wish [the company] could be smaller instead of bigger. It keeps getting bigger as the projects keep getting bigger and so it takes more people to manage it. I’m ultimately responsible for everything. On the other hand if I didn’t have all these people to do things….
What are you currently working on?
Right now we are doing three huge projects. One of which we just installed at the new Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall. We did two chandeliers. One is 20 feet high and one is 50 feet high. If you go by there at night it’s really quite spectacular. Then we are doing the ceiling for the new Bellaggio Hotel in Las Vegas. It’s a $1.6 billion hotel and we are doing the artwork for the lobby, which has a 2,000-plus-square-foot center ceiling with 1,500 pieces of glass coming down into the lobby. That’s the largest project I have ever done. And we’re doing three projects at the Atlantis, a hotel on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
Have you ever attempted anything that you weren’t able to pull off?
I’ve never attempted anything I couldn’t pull off that was actual commission. But I’ve attempted things that I couldn’t pull off that I did on my own.
Are you still artistically able to do what you want?
Yes, I’m able to do things that aren’t commission. I’m able to work on projects. Like the project we did on this island in Japan some months ago. It was an idea I had that had nothing to do with a commission but so far has been a failure. [Laughs] It hasn’t come to fruition. It had to do with Japanese fishing influence. We’re experimenting right now with putting some pieces inside an aquarium in Tacoma. That may go somewhere; it may not. I would say that a lot of the ways that new work happens and gets developed, however, is through commissions. Sometimes they take you to a different place than if you were to do whatever you wanted to.
When you are blowing glass, how much of it is knowing exactly how a piece will turn out and how much of it is how the glass starts to form?
Well, I’m one of the people who relied on chance and centrifugal force, fire, and gravity to make forms. But if you start making them over and over and day in and day out, you get to understand the properties. It doesn’t mean you make each piece the same or each piece looks the same, but you know generally what is going to happen. I don’t like things totally precise. It’s just like when we make a chandelier — when we take it apart, we don’t number the pieces to put it back together. I encourage the owners of the pieces to try moving this one over here or there. See how you like it, I tell them.
You have pieces in the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum, but you also take time to do smaller shows and lectures. Do you think staying close to the public has helped your career?
Well, the more time you spend out in the public, the less time you spend in the studio, so it’s got its pros and cons. It’s hard to say. I like to do the little shows and the big shows because glass is a material that people really respond to — plus a lot of people in television or whatever know who I am. That brings so much more to it if the general public has some idea of the personality they are going to see. So, it’s nice to be able to do a show in a little town because they don’t usually get the shows by [artists] that they know about.
It does take organization to travel shows around the world, so that is another reason I have more employees. It takes people to set them up and take them down and make all the arrangements. I want many people to see a show because it brings so much joy to so many people’s lives. We often break attendance records at museums.
Is there anywhere else in the world that you would like to work?
I’m doing a project for the millennium in the Citadel. Perhaps the title is going to be Chihuly Over Jerusalem. It’s kind of a working title but it is in the Citadel. Towers and glass in the Citadel. [Originally constructed by the Hasmonean kings in 1st-2nd century B.C., the fortress now houses the Museum of the History of Jerusalem.]
You lived in Jerusalem in the ’60s?
Yes, in the early ’60s I worked in a kibbutz in Israel.
Did it ever occur to you when you lived there that someday you might be creating a piece for display in the Citadel?
No, it certainly didn’t. [Laughs]
You’ve been a member of the Columbia Tower Club since 1992. Why did you join the club?
Other than for the obvious reasons of what a private club offers, I can tell you this — it’s because of the view. There really is no comparison in terms of the view. The club overlooks Elliott Bay. Seattle is one of the most beautifully situated cities in the country, with water all around it. From there, you get a perspective of all the water and the land. Ferries are coming and going. It’s a thrill. It’s just unbelievable.
What would you consider your breakthrough to success?
No one thing.
What do you think success is for you?
Success is being able, for me, to be in a position to create whatever I want to do. To have resources to go to different parts of the world to work with glass and to have a great glassblowing team, a great architectural team, and a great behind-the-scenes team. That is where I truly think that I have been fortunate. That is one area that I can clearly see.
GLASS ACT
The method of Venetian glassblowing
The process of blowing glass begins when the blower dips a hollow iron blowpipe into a tank of molten glass (sand, soda, and lime mixed together and melted at around 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit) creating a pear-shaped end, or “gather.” While sitting, the blower rolls the pipe up and down his arms, manipulating the end with tools called blocks until the result is a smooth, rounded form.
Color rods are heated separately and dropped over the gather. This creates a thin layer of color, which is sandwiched between the layers of clear glass.
The blower then enlarges the piece of glass by blowing, constantly turning the pipe and reheating the glass so the shape does not collapse. At this point, a gaffer takes over forming the bottom of the piece while the blower continues to enlarge it.
The piece is then transferred to a larger, heavier rod so the gaffer can shape the upper end of the form, using long tongs to manipulate and squeeze the form while assistants shield his body from the heat with wooden paddles.
When the piece is finished, it is broken off the pipe and handed to a worker in a heat-protective silver suit, who places it in an “annealing” oven, which allows the glass to cool slowly, over a period of 24 to 72 hours.