An artist extraordinaire
Dale Chihuly started his journey of blowing glasses in the 1960s. Today, almost five decades later, he has championed blowing glass as a vehicle for making sculptures. Focusing on the vessel in his explorations of colours and forms, the final product that he creates is the most captivating art.
Born in 1941 at Tacoma, Washington, Dale Chihuly is now world renowned as a glass sculptor, creative artist and entrepreneur. He was introduced to glass while studying interior design at the University of Washington, where he took a weaving course and that was the beginning of weaving baskets, which later led to blowing glass.
Colour plays an important role in the creation of his glass sculptures. To quote Chihuly, “I don't know if something can be so colourful. Colour is one of the great properties of glass and is more intense in glass than any other material.”
He has mastered glass-works and has dozens of well-known series including Cylinders and Baskets in the 1970s: Seaforms, Macchia, Venetians and Persians in the 1980s; Niijima Floats and Chandeliers in the 1990s; and Fiori in the 2000s and many others.
Chihuly maintains that his role is “more of choreographer than dancer, more supervisor than participant, more director than an actor.”
His team of artists have been busy blowing glasses in the workshop and the artworks are in permanent or temporary displays in many places and growing day by day. He has become an entrepreneur and exhibits all over the world.
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) held one of Chihuly's exhibitions from October 2012 to February 2013, where every single glass-work on display had its own character. He had worked with glass in a variety of sizes, from small vessels to room-size installations.
Chihuly's large-scale installations included Persians and Chandeliers, which caught the attention of connoisseurs along with the casual visitor.
One of the star attractions of the exhibition was Chihuly's wooden boat with glasswork. There were two wooden rowboats, one filled with Fiori elements and another with Niijima floats. The Fiori Boat featured various garden glass shapes and forms inspired by the artist's love for gardens and conservatories. Niijima Floats were inspired by the artist's trip to the Japanese island of Niijima.
In Chihuly's words, “The Baskets was the first series that I did that really took advantage of the molten properties of the glassblowing process.” The baskets were his original idea, which led him to other series.
At the VMFA the exhibits were spread out over several rooms. “I'm going to use all three hundred colours in the hotshop in as many possible variations and combinations as I can,” Chihuly maintained while speaking about his work.
The Macchia series, the name being derived from the Italian for 'spotted' or 'stained', begins with his imagination of 300 colours. His playfulness with colour has no canvas; it is like an oversized kaleidoscope.
Like a potter who plays with clay giving it life as an art piece, Chihuly gives life to the objects he works with. With the variations of colour he creates a wonderful array of installations and art pieces that attracts the connoisseurs and the laymen alike.
Photo: Aeman T Rasul
To learn more about the artist, log onto: chihuly.com
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