Dale Chihuly

Dale Patrick Chihuly was born on September 20, 1941, in Tacoma, Washington.[3] His parents were George and Viola Chihuly; his paternal grandfather was born in Slovakia.[3] In 1956, his older brother and only sibling, George, died in a Navy aviation training accident in Pensacola, Florida.[4] Two years later, in 1958, Chihuly's father died of a heart attack at the age of 51.[5][6]

Chihuly had no interest in continuing his formal education after graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1959. However, at his mother's urging, he enrolled at the College of Puget Sound[6] A year later, he transferred to the University of Washington in Seattle to study interior design. In 1961, he joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Kappa Epsilon chapter), and the same year he learned how to melt and fuse glass.[4] Chihuly became bored with his studies, and in 1962 he dropped out of the university to study art in Florence. He later traveled to the Middle East where he met architect Robert Landsman. Their meeting and his time abroad spurred Chihuly to return to his studies. In 1963, he took a weaving class where he incorporated glass shards into tapestries. He received an award for his work from the Seattle Weavers Guild in 1964.[4] Chihuly graduated from the University of Washington in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in interior design.[6]

Chihuly began experimenting with glassblowing in 1965, and in 1966 he received a full scholarship to attend the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[4] He studied under Harvey Littleton, who had established the first glass program in the United States at the university. In 1967, Chihuly received a Master of Science degree in sculpture. After graduating, he enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he met and became close friends with Italo Scanga. Chihuly earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the RISD in 1968. That same year, he was awarded a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant for his work in glass, as well as a Fulbright Fellowship.[4] He traveled to Venice to work at the Venini factory on the island of Murano, where he first saw the team approach to blowing glass.[7] After returning to the United States, Chihuly spent the first of four consecutive summers teaching at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine. In 1969, he traveled to Europe, in part to meet Erwin Eisch in Germany and Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová in Czechoslovakia.[4] Chihuly donated a portion of a large exhibit to his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin, in 1997 and it is on permanent display in the Kohl Center. In 2013 the University awarded him a Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts.

Chihuly at Kew Gardens

In 1971, with the support of John Hauberg and Anne Gould Hauberg, Chihuly cofounded the Pilchuck Glass School near Stanwood, Washington. Chihuly also founded the HillTop Artists program in Tacoma, Washington at Jason Lee Middle School and Wilson High School.

In 1976, while Chihuly was in England, he was involved in a head-on car accident during which he was propelled through the windshield.[8] His face was severely cut by glass and he was blinded in his left eye. After recovering, he continued to blow glass until he dislocated his right shoulder in 1979 while bodysurfing. No longer able to hold the glassblowing pipe, he hired others to do the work. Chihuly explained the change in a 2006 interview, saying "Once I stepped back, I liked the view," and pointed out that it allowed him to see the work from more perspectives and enabled him to anticipate problems earlier. Chihuly's role has been described as "more choreographer than dancer, more supervisor than participant, more director than actor."[1] San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Erin Glass wrote that she "wonders at the vision of not just the artist Chihuly, but the very successful entrepreneur Chihuly, whose estimated sales by 2004 was reported by The Seattle Times as $29 million."[9] Chihuly and his team of artists were the subjects of the documentary Chihuly Over Venice. They were also featured in the documentary Chihuly in the Hotshop, syndicated to public television stations by American Public Television starting on November 1, 2008.[10]

Chihuly's The Sun was on temporary display until January 2006 at Kew Gardens

Yellow Chandelier at the Tower of David Museum 1999–2000

Regina Hackett, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer art critic, provided a chronology of Chihuly's work during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s:

• 1975: Navajo Blanket Series, in which patterns of Navajo blankets were painted onto glass
• 1977: Northwest Coast Basket Series, baskets inspired by Northwest coast Indian baskets he had seen as a child
• 1980: Seaform Series, transparent sculptures of thin glass, strengthened by ribbed strands of color
• 1981: Macchia Series, featuring every color available in the studio
• 1986: Persian Series, inspired by Middle East glass from the 12th- to 14th-century, featuring more restrained color and room-sized installations
• 1988: Venetian Series, improvisations based on Italian Art Deco
• 1989: Ikebana Series, glass flower arrangements inspired by ikebana
• 1990: Venetian Series returns, this time in a more eccentric form
• 1991: Niijima Floats, six-foot spheres of intricate color inspired by Japanese glass fishing floats from the island of Niijima[15] from Chihuly's website
• 1992: Chandeliers, starting modestly but by the middle of the decade involving a ton of glass orbs and shapes that in some works look like flowers, others like breasts, and still others like snakes. Chihuly has also produced a sizable volume of "Irish cylinders",[16] which are more modest in conception than his blown glass works.

For his exhibition in Jerusalem, Israel in 2000, in addition to the glass pieces, he had enormous blocks of transparent ice brought in from an Alaskan artesian well and formed a wall, echoing the stones of the nearby Citadel. Lights with color gels were set up behind them for illumination. Chihuly said the melting wall represented the "dissolution of barriers" between people.[17] This exhibit holds the world record for most visitors to a temporary exhibit with more than 1.3 million visitors.[18]

• Chihuly Over Venice by William Warmus and Dana Self. Seattle: Portland Press, 1996.
• Chihuly by Donald Kuspit. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.
• The Essential Dale Chihuly by William Warmus. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000.
• Dale Chihuly:365 Days. Margaret L. Kaplan, Editor. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2008.
• Chihuly Drawing, illustrated by Chihuly, with an essay by Nathan Kernan. Portland Press, 2003, ISBN 1-57684-019-0
• Warmus, William; Oldknow, Tina (2020). Venice and American Studio Glass. Milan: Skira. ISBN 9788857243870.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dale Chihuly.

• Official website
• Chihuly Garden And Glass exhibition
• Seattle Times article on Dale Chihuly