Among the most recognized and sought-after names in contemporary glass artistry, Dale Chihuly has reached a point in his career that he accepts only about 60 new commissions a year. As everyone familiar with the artist’s work knows, that is no small undertaking.
The chandeliers and millefiori forests, the gigantic floats and the flowers and glass ceilings that Chihuly draws and executes †in collaboration with a skilled team of hot shop artists known as “Team Chihuly” †are breakthrough pieces. Chihuly has done for glass art what Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry did for museum architecture: stripped it of all preconceived notions and thrust it squarely into the realm of contemporary sculpture.
His pieces have morphed over the years from weavings to tabletop designs to atrium-sized sculptures that spring like waterspouts from resort floors. Despite his fame †or perhaps because of it †Chihuly this year committed to a project that is taking him back to his roots, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), the place where it all began for him.
As part of RISD’s inauguration celebration of the new multiuse Chace Center at the Museum of Art, designed by architect Jose Rafael Moneo, come two comprehensive exhibitions: “Chihuly at RISD” and “Studio Glass in Rhode Island: The Chihuly Years.” At the heart of the exhibits, opening Saturday, September 27, are two sculptures, comprising 22,000 hand-blown elements, set within the curves of a serpentine wall that runs nearly the entire length of the Chace Center’s main gallery.
In describing the creations, Chihuly said, ‘”Neon Forest of Glass’ is partially a redo of a 1971 piece I did with Jamie Carpenter.” (Carpenter studied under Chihuly and they collaborated for a period of four years.) The earlier piece was inspired by the Native American blankets the artist collects. The second sculpture, he said, is ‘”Mille Fiori.’ It is very colorful.” As for the serpentine wall, “It [the idea] came first. I had never worked in an environment like that,” said the artist.
Also on view are a chandelier and a smaller sculpture, which has been positioned near the window Moneo set in the front of the gallery to overlook a small park and with backdrop views of downtown Providence. It is composed of glass structures rising from a base of New England birch logs.
Elsewhere, an entire wall has been assigned to display 100 Chihuly drawings, key elements in the creative process. The glass walls of the bridge that connect Moneo’s building to the historic buildings that house RISD’s Museum of Art are also to be filled with Chihuly art.
In a very real sense, the entire show is about connections. There is, of course, the obvious symmetry between Moneo’s modernist urban architecture and Chihuly’s modern take on glass. Deeper than that is Chihuly’s career-long relationship with RISD.
In 1968, after studying with Harvey K. Littleton at the University of Washington, what was then the country’s only glass program, Chihuly went on to receive an MFA in ceramics from RISD. He stayed on at RISD to establish the glass department and begin a teaching career that would span 11 years. It would grow to include a bicoastal teaching schedule after the establishment the Pilchuk Glass School in Seattle in 1971.
The relationship between the teacher/artist and RISD was not always smooth; at one point during the height of the Vietnam War, Chihuly and a group of activists closed RISD in protest of the Cambodian offensive. The action seems not to have rendered him any less of a mentor to a generation of East Coast studio glass artists.
Among those influenced during Chihuly’s tenure at RISD are Carpenter, Howard Ben Tré, Bruce Chao, Dan Dailey, Michael Glancy, Therman Statom, James Watkins, Steven Weinberg and Toots Zynsky. A selection of their work is being shown in the companion studio glass show.
“I encouraged them to find their own voice,” said Chihuly of his students. “It’s the only way to survive in the art world.”
Since 1964, when Chihuly hung a glass weaving in his mother’s window, and later in early experiments at RISD with neon, argon and blown glass, he has cut his own path. Although his teacher, Littleton, the son of the Corning chemist responsible for inventing the annealing oven, is generally credited with pioneering the Studio Glass movement, it was not until Chihuly commandeered the furnaces and blowpipes that interest in the medium really took off.
Recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, Chihuly was the first American glassblower to work in the Venini Fabrica on the Italian island of Murano. The experience taught him not only the ancient and advanced techniques, it also introduced him to the team approach to glassmaking, a concept he subsequently implemented. Chihuly has stated that the team concept allows him to better control the process that turns the molten glass into an expanded form faster than one might imagine. In reality, he likely could not have been able to continue his career without it.
Two accidents within a short period of time left Chihuly sightless in one eye and with permanent damage to an ankle and foot. He also has a dislocated shoulder.
Glassmaking is not a plein air art, best suited for a summer’s day; it is a hot, physically demanding process. And if the finished product appears to be as fragile as it is amorphous, that would be delusional; glass is one of the hardest substances. Breakage, for the most part, is intentional, a culling process for pieces that are not up to snuff.
The process takes place in a hot shop. It begins with stirring furnaces that reach temperatures of 2,400 degrees F to produce a molten product. Working molten glass is like trying to organize a viscous liquid, which, structurally, it is, until it cools. The magic, so to speak, that transforms gathered molten glass into a predetermined, hardened form is air, often exhaled in short puffs from human lungs through a blowpipe.
There are other techniques that come into play, such as the use of molds. But mostly, the glass in Chihuly’s hot shop is blown. The steps to completion include infusing the material with colored powders, cooling the molten glass on a marver, generally a flat piece of steel, inflating the molten glass to a bubble, shaping it, sometimes returning it to the glory hole, a secondary furnace intended to reheat the material, or spot heating it with a torch to continue with the formation of large flowers, for example.
The medium is worked with wet wooden paddles, tweaked with large tweezers and sliced with shears. Techniques are often combined, such as using colored canes and fusing glasses together †all of which demands a high level of expertise and teamwork. Finally, once the desired form has been achieved, the glass must then be annealed, returned to a furnace for the slow cooling at the appropriate stress-relieving temperature for its thickness.
On any one project, it takes an experienced gaffer, a chief of operations, to direct the efforts of the six or eight glass artisans who make up Team Chihuly. They work from drawings, which Chihuly has used for some time to communicate his designs. More action painter than abstractionist, he throws his entire being into the process, sometimes going so far as to “sweep” the paint across the paper. Often these drawings, when presented as concepts, are advanced by the input of team members.
When Chihuly permanently relinquished the gaffer’s position in 1979, he took on the role of hot shop “director.” This is by no means a bench-warming position; Chihuly is an essential participant in the creative fray.
Over the years, the sculptures have grown in complexity and size. As to why his works are so large, Chihuly has said, “I often push a series to its maximum size †just to keep the glassblowers on the very edge of the technical abilities, to keep the tension high, to make it exciting.” He adds, “If you know exactly what you’re doing and you can make it every time, it’s not going to be very interesting.”
Chihuly has explored any number of creative concepts. Inspiration springs from nature, the sea, gardens, Ikebana and other stimuli. Many references are autobiographical, such as harkening back to a remembrance of his mother’s garden or his own overgrown collections of, among other things, Pendleton blankets.
His appreciation of Native American textiles has infused many pieces over the years, most notably “Navajo Blanket Cylinders,” an early work that was purchased by Henry Geldzahler, curator of contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in 1976. The sale marked a turning point in Chihuly’s career, bringing him recognition, commissions and shows.
In 1976, he became one of only four American artists to have a solo exhibition at the Louvre.
In 1980, Chihuly resigned his teaching post at RISD but maintained ties, returning periodically during the decade as artist-in-residence. When his first major catalog, Chihuly: Glass , was published in 1982, his RISD friend Malcolm Grearhis designed it. In 1984, Chihuly was honored as the RISD President’s Fellow at the Whitney Museum in New York. It is just one of many awards and honorary degrees he holds.
Highlights of his career include “Macchia,” or spotted glass in Italian, a theme that had its genesis in 1981. In 1988, a private collection of Art Deco glass inspired the beginnings of the “Venetian” series. In 1991, inspired by memories of found beach objects, he began the “Nijima Float” series, creating the largest pieces of glass ever blown by hand. The year 1992 saw the genesis of the “Chandelier” series.
The year 1995 brought the beginnings of “Chihuly Over Venice,” a project so complex it involved glass factories in Finland, Ireland and Mexico. In 1999, the artist mounted an ambitious installation in the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem. In 2001, he populated the venerable Victoria and Albert Museum with a series of exhibitions within botanical settings.
Today, Chihuly’s work is represented in 200 museums. The installations have brought new awareness to an art form that is more than 2,000 years old.
While responsible for the designs and, ultimately, the resulting sculptures, Chihuly has always given credit to his collaborators or head gaffers. It is a part of the team system.
With his RISD ties now being formally acknowledged, Chihuly’s involvement in the Chace Center speaks of success for the future generations of artists and industrial designers who will receive training there.
Functioning as classroom, research center, design showroom and gallery, the Chace Center is bordered on both sides by historic buildings. Yet the five-story glass and brick structure fits comfortably into the grid.
The RISD collection is deep and extensive. It may also be one of the best-kept secrets of the art world. “Chihuly at RISD” and “Studio Glass in Rhode Island: The Chihuly Years” offer the perfect jumping off place for an exploration of the collection.
Numerous other exhibitions are currently on view, including “From Dürer To Van Gogh: Gifts From Eliza Metcalf Radeke And Helen Metcalf Danforth” and “RISD And Photography,” both closing on October 26. “Art And Design From The Twentieth Century” and “Exine By Paul Morrison” are ongoing.
The Chihuly exhibitions will be on view through January. The Museum of Art at RISD is at 224 Benefit Street. For information, 401-454-6500 or www.risd.edu/museum.cfm .
