Chihuly: Glass Artist by Margaret Haberman
Daryl Smith, 39, blows and twirls a glob of glowing glass at the end of a long stainless steel pipe, rolling the molten mass on a table to fashion an orange-red icicle shape at the Seattle studio of American glass master Dale Chihuly. Using an array of torches, files, crimps, tweezers and shears, Smith curls, imprints and cuts the fiery shape—moving it in and out of a 2,150-degree furnace to keep the material pliable —before a fellow craftsman places the glass in a cooling oven.
The finished object is one of 1,800 pieces being used to create a massive sculpture for Chihuly’s most ambitious project to date—the 1½-acre Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit opening later this year in Seattle. The venture’s hallmark glass house will feature a massive installation 100 feet long and 25 feet high.
“People are going to see it and go, ‘Whoa!’” says Chihuly, 70. One of America’s most prominent and prolific living artists, Chihuly is credited with elevating the craft of glassmaking to a fine art. His inventive sculptures—abstract baskets, colorful sea forms, lavish towers and effusive chandeliers—appear in the permanent collections of more than 200 museums worldwide and countless private collections.
Chihuly himself is a striking figure, with a barrel chest, a patch covering his blind left eye and a crown of curly hair. He offers a simple explanation for his success in recasting glass as a popular artistic movement.
“I think people like to look at something they’ve never seen before,” he says. “And that’s what I try to do.”
The charismatic artist and his team create Chihuly’s glassworks in a studio along Seattle’s waterfront housed in a former racing shell factory that he dubbed the Boathouse. Inside the “hot shop” before a row of furnaces, Smith wears sunglasses and works as the gaffer, or head glassblower, using heat and motion to stretch glass into various forms. For the icicle shape, he gyrates the superheated glass bubble attached to his pipe until it sags and droops—a signature technique of his boss.
“Glass has a mind of its own, and the way I work is using fire and centrifugal force and gravity,” Chihuly explains.
His work has become a source of pride in his native Tacoma, thanks in part to the artist and many public displays of his sculptures in the city’s cultural district. The most famous is the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, a 500-foot-long pedestrian walkway that was built in 2002.
Daryl Smith, 39, blows and twirls a glob of glowing glass at the end of a long stainless steel pipe, rolling the molten mass on a table to fashion an orange-red icicle shape at the Seattle studio of American glass master Dale Chihuly. Using an array of torches, files, crimps, tweezers and shears, Smith curls, imprints and cuts the fiery shape—moving it in and out of a 2,150-degree furnace to keep the material pliable —before a fellow craftsman places the glass in a cooling oven.
The finished object is one of 1,800 pieces being used to create a massive sculpture for Chihuly’s most ambitious project to date—the 1½-acre Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit opening later this year in Seattle. The venture’s hallmark glass house will feature a massive installation 100 feet long and 25 feet high.
“People are going to see it and go, ‘Whoa!’” says Chihuly, 70. One of America’s most prominent and prolific living artists, Chihuly is credited with elevating the craft of glassmaking to a fine art. His inventive sculptures—abstract baskets, colorful sea forms, lavish towers and effusive chandeliers—appear in the permanent collections of more than 200 museums worldwide and countless private collections.
Chihuly himself is a striking figure, with a barrel chest, a patch covering his blind left eye and a crown of curly hair. He offers a simple explanation for his success in recasting glass as a popular artistic movement.
“I think people like to look at something they’ve never seen before,” he says. “And that’s what I try to do.”
The charismatic artist and his team create Chihuly’s glassworks in a studio along Seattle’s waterfront housed in a former racing shell factory that he dubbed the Boathouse. Inside the “hot shop” before a row of furnaces, Smith wears sunglasses and works as the gaffer, or head glassblower, using heat and motion to stretch glass into various forms. For the icicle shape, he gyrates the superheated glass bubble attached to his pipe until it sags and droops—a signature technique of his boss.
“Glass has a mind of its own, and the way I work is using fire and centrifugal force and gravity,” Chihuly explains.
His work has become a source of pride in his native Tacoma, thanks in part to the artist and many public displays of his sculptures in the city’s cultural district. The most famous is the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, a 500-foot-long pedestrian walkway that was built in 2002.
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