Dale Chihuly: "Seaforms"
June 22—September 12, 1999
In 1992, when a reporter pressed world-renowned glass artist, Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941), for details about his next exhibition, Chihuly offered few specifics about individual pieces. Instead, he said: "We just like making something you’ve never seen before."
Dale Chihuly: "Seaforms," which opens at the Palmer Museum of Art on June 22, 1999, consists of more than thirty works gathered from the "Seaforms" series, and features both fully executed blown glass pieces, as well as preparatory works on paper. The "Seaforms" series, created between 1980 and 1995, is but one example from Chihuly's body of work to prove that the artist has long succeeded in "making something you've never seen before."
Chihuly’s work departs from—even shatters—conventional ideas of what glass art can be. Glass, even glass art, is often expected to adhere to generally utilitarian forms, specific guidelines, and traditional influences. Not so with Chihuly’s work, which explores the inherent malleability and natural fluidity of molten glass, creating amorphous objects that look more alive than functional.
Nowhere are these qualities better exemplified than in the "Seaforms" series; individual pieces—organic, undulating, vibrant, and luminescent—call to mind exotic forms of marine life: translucent jellyfish, colorful and opalescent seashells.
After earning two earlier degrees in interior design and sculpture, Chihuly traveled to the Rhode Island School of Design to pursue an M.F.A., and while there established RISD’s own glass department in 1968. Later that year, Chihuly traveled to Venice on a Fulbright Fellowship, where he apprenticed under the world’s preeminent masters of glassblowing at Vetri Soffiati Muranesi Venini & C. It was there that he spent one of his most formative years as an artist. Although Chihuly didn’t produce a definitive body of work while at the glassworks—in fact, he didn’t work on the floor of the factory, nor did he blow glass—he nonetheless acquired and developed knowledge far more valuable than any object he might have produced during his stay.
Through patient observation, Chihuly gained access to the zealously guarded Italian glassmaking secrets that had long eluded and amazed outsiders. He learned that, more than any special technique or process, gimmick or trick, Italian glassmaking was about "teamwork." This lesson has served Chihuly well; indeed, it has accounted for the success of his most ambitious projects during the past three decades. In 1971, soon after his return to America, Chihuly founded Pilchuck Glass School, which fused his own love of experimentation with the Italians’ emphasis on collaboration.
Teamwork and collaboration became crucial to Chihuly’s work when a series of injuries—first, an auto accident in 1976 that caused him to lose sight in his left eye, and then, a dislocated shoulder—kept him from blowing glass on his own. While the accidents he faced might have spelled disaster for the careers and productivity of more staunchly independent artists, Chihuly was able to adapt to the physical limitations before him. Chihuly assumed the roles of designer and supervisor, orchestrating a group of assistants who execute his designs.
Together, the "Seaforms" drawings and glass pieces allow visitors to follow the range of Chihuly’s collaborative vision, from his earliest ideas on paper to their full realization in luminous glass. Chihuly sees this series as one which draws upon the commonalties shared by glass and water—two substances which, at first consideration, appear to have little in common. "Glass itself, of course, is so much like water," he says. "If you let it go on its own, it almost ends up looking like something that came from the sea." This collection of Chihuly’s work pushes the boundaries of glassmaking, bringing to the surface shapes and colors rarely seen on dry land.
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