Chihuly establishes his first hotshop in the Van de Kamp building
near Lake Union. He donates a permanent retrospective collection to the
Tacoma Art Museum in honor of his brother and father.
His association with artist Parks Anderson commences with the "Rainbow
Room Frieze," a permanent installation for the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller
Center in New York City. Chihuly marries playwright Sylvia Peto.
In another of Chihuly's unpublished statements - labeled "Public Installations
and Niijima Floats," from 1992 - the artist notes: "With a degree in interior
design, I have always been interested in space and architecture," an observation
no one woutd contest. But he goes on to add, "My big break came in 1986
when I was commissioned to do a frieze for the renovation of the Rainbow
Room at Rockefeller Center. The site forced me to work directly off the
wall, ten feet above the froor."
On first reading, I found this comment surprising. Though none of Chihuly's
early installations - such as the recently recreated ice-and-neon pieces
or his early collaborative project for the American Craft Museum, both
conceived with Jamie Carpenter -literally made use of the wall, they seemed
just as radical in their use of architectural space.
What the Rainbow Room commission offered was the opportunity to install
works that had previously been relegated to temporary exhibitions or isolated
cases as part of a permanent interior scheme or design. This put Chihuly's
creative practice squarely back into the arena of architecture and shifted
the "use-valué" of his art indisputably from object to environment.
| Biography |
Born
in 1941 in Tacoma, Washington, Dale Chihuly was introduced to glass when
studying interior design at the University of Washington. After graduating
in 1965 and working for a time for John Graham Architects, Chihuly enrolled
in Harvey Littleton's seminal glass program at the University of Wisconsin.
In
1992 he was named the first National Living Treasure in the United States.
His work is included in over one hundred eighty museum collections from
New York to Kyoto.
In 1986 Kodansha International Ltd. published Dale Chihuly: Color, Glass,
and Form. That same year he became the fourth American to be honored by
a one-man exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris; two other
Northwesterners, the painter Mark Tobey, the textile designer Jack Lenor
Larsen, and the painter and sculptor Roy Lichtenstein have also shown
in the Louvre.
This exhibition has now been seen in four other countries.
In 1988 Henry Geldzahler curated an exhibition of Chihuly's Persians for
the Dia Art Foundation. This exhibition toured North America. Also in
1988 Chihuly began a new body of work with the Venetian master Lino Tagliapietro.
Inspired by Venetian glass of the Art Deco period, these pieces have been
celebrated in the book Dale Chihuly: Venetians, published by Twin Palms
Press in 1990. A survey exhibition was presented at the Azabu Museum in
Tokyo in 1990.
The following year Chihuly: Venetians originated at the Umeleckoprymslové
muzeum v Praze in Praha, Czechoslovakia; this exhibition was also shown
at the Röhss Konstodjmuseet in Goteborg, Sweden, and Museum fur Kunst
und Gewerbe, Hamburg. At the Glasmuseum in Ebeltoft, Denmark, Chihuly
had the honor of exhibiting with Klaus Moje in the summer of 1991.
In 1994 Portland Press published Chihuly Baskets, which presented that
series along with reproductions of Chihuly's own collection of Northwest
Native baskets, a form which inspired his own baskets of handblown glass.
The exhibition opened in Wenatchee, Washington, in September 1994 and
has been touring the United States since.
Another series, Seaforms, was published in 1995, and a tour of the Seaforms
exhibition began its national tour at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C., in February 1996.
In March 1996, the Governors Ball following the Academy Awards featured
a major installation of Chihuly's work. Installations have come to the
fore in all of the artist's recent creations, and one of his most notable
public installations can be seen in Union Station in Tacoma, Washington.
The centerpiece of the installation is a cobalt blue Chandelier, a configuration
of forms that has been the focus of the artist's imagination for much
of the recent past and has led him to pursue what may well turn out to
be the greatest accomplishment of his career, "Chihuly over Venice."
The year ended with Chihuly's first permanent outdoor installation,
the Icicle Creek Chandelier, at the Sleeping Lady Retreat and Conference
Center, in Leavenworth, Washington. In January 1997 Chihuly traveled to
the Virgin Islands and stayed on St. Croix, where he created a suite more
than 100 drawings, inspired by the island scenery. 1998 was a year of
growth and expansion of the artwork as well as a continued sharing of
ideas and talents across the oceans. While hundreds of thousands of people
viewed an exhibition throughout Japan, Chihuly and his team blew glass
on the island of Niijima.
In Australia, the Sydney Opera House was one of the sites for the installation
of artwork during the Sydney Arts Festival, where Chihuly was the guest
of honor. The fall of 1998 marked the installation of major works created
for exciting public architectural spaces. Two large chandeliers were created
for the lobby of Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony.
Four major permanent installations were created for the Atlantis Resort
on Paradise Island, Bahamas-Temple of the Sun, Temple of the Moon, Crystal
Gate, and Atlantis Chandelier.
Littleton is considered the father of the American studio glass movement,
which changed the medium world-wide from one of craft and design to
one in which artists may work directly with the material for their own
aesthetic expression.
Chihuly received his M.S. in 1967. He continued his glass studies at
the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and was awarded an M.F.A. in
1968.
After a Fulbright Fellowship, working and observing in the Venini factory
in Venice, Chihuly returned to RISD to establish and head a glass department.
In 1971 Chihuly co-founded Pilchuck Glass School, fifty miles north
of Seattle.
It is now an international glass center and attracts students and teachers
from around the world.
Chihuly has been the recipient of many awards including honorary doctorates
from the University of Puget Sound, the Rhode Island School of Design,
and the California College of Arts and Crafts.
He is a Fellow of the American Craft Council and has received the Governor's
Art Awards from both Rhode Island and Washington. He has also been honored
with two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American
Council for the Arts Visual Artist's Award, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany
Foundation Award.
In 1992 Chihuly opened the year with a special installation
of Niijima Floats at the American Craft Museum in New York. The first
one-man exhibition to be held in the Seattle Art Museum's new home designed
by Robert Venturi surveyed Chihuly's large- scale architectural installations,
and this exhibition is currently touring in the United States.
The Seattle public television station, KCTS, produced a half-hour documentary
that traced the preparations for this exhibition. This program has been
seen in many United States and Australian markets. He completed designs
for the sets of the Seattle Opera's production of Debussy's Pelléas
and Mélisande, which opened in March 1993.
One of Chihuly's largest permanent installation works was completed
for the corporate headquarters of Little Caesar's in Detroit. To accompany
the exhibition Form from Fire, The Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona
Beach, in association with the University of Washington Press, published
an expanded catalog with essays by Henry Geldzahler and Walter Darby
Bannard.
To document Chihuly's creative process, the Seattle Opera, in association
with the University of Washington Press, produced Pelleas + Melisande
+ Chihuly, with full-color illustrations of the drawings and maquettes
the artist made as he designed the sets for this impressionistic opera.
Chihuly's first one-man exhibition in Australia opened at the Powerhouse
Museum in Sydney before starting on its tour.
This international, multifaceted project began with Chihuly's
fascination with chandeliers and has become a two year-long aesthetic
and cultural phenomenon.
In the summer of 1995, Chihuly took his team of glassblowers to work
with the artisans in the famed Iittala glass works in Nuutajärvi, Finland.
This blow yielded strong working relationships between the Finns and
the Americans, as well as thousands of glass sculptures, many incorporated
into chandlers hung in various outdoor locations in and around the Nuutajärvi
River. Many were new to the artist's oeuvre, such as Reeds and Belugas
and Seal Pups.
The next trip for Chihuly and his team was to Waterford, Ireland, where
glass was blown, sometimes etched, and installed in and around the 500
year-old Lismore Castle. Again new shapes and colors and friends resulted.
Perhaps the most powerfully emotional of all the blows was the trip
to Monterrey, Mexico, where Chihuly and his team worked side-by-side
with workers in the huge and noisy VitroCrisa factory, which employs
50,000 people and produces 5 million bottles a day for commercial use.
Bonds were formed between the Americans and the Mexicans that transcended
the work, although that, too, was extraordinary.
The fourth blow took place in Venice, Italy, in September 1996, where
Chandeliers from each country, including the United States, were installed
in campos and along the canals of that city famed for its tradition
of glass.
During the month of October Chihuly installed his largest glass sculpture
to date, the Fiori di Como, a ceiling sculpture in the lobby of the
Bellagio Resort in Las Vegas.
The work is composed of over two thousand hand blown forms, creating
a colored veil of glass.
In November, Chihuly Over Venice was the subject of a documentary television
program, the first HD-TV broadcast by PBS.
In July of 1999 Chihuly mounted his most ambitious exhibition to date:
Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000.
With support teams from Seattle and Israel he created 15 installations
within the stone walls of an ancient military fortress, currently known
as the Tower of David Museum of the History of Jerusalem.
A powerful Mediterranean sunlight illuminated the Crystal Mountain,
the Red Spears, and the Blue Tower-three of the installations in an
exhibition that was a dramatic celebration of light and color. Chihuly
returned to Jerusalem in October to create a 60' wall from 24 massive
blocks of ice shipped from Alaska.
As a gift from Chihuly to the citizens of Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Wall
of Ice symbolized the hope of melting tensions between the peoples of
the Middle East. In September of 1999 Chihuly traveled to the Victoria
& Albert Museum, London, to unveil an 18' chandelier gracing the main
entrance of the Museum. Chihuly culminated the year by designing two
sculptures for the White House Millennium Celebration.
