It is the medium of glass, usually thought of as a means to the end of containing something, probably liquid – water or wine for example. Very important and very practical, for some 4000 years. Glass. The old Venetians got tired of having areas burn down in their city, so exiled the glassmakers to an island just off the city shoreline, the island of Murano. And Murano glass became a hot (pun intended) item for the trade the Venetians have always engaged in. Those craftsmen began to make really beautiful vessels and combinations of their glass into trade beads, for example. What is glass, anyhow? It is a substance which is not a solid, and not a liquid, but is described as “vitreous” – which means “glass.” It is primarily silica, which is a prime ingredient of sand. In reading further, I found that the molecules are held together somewhat loosely. And it is quite liquid when it is very, very hot. And this is where Dale Chihuly comes into this picture. http://www.chihuly.com I hope that lots of you are familiar with his work, because it is way beyond the limits that glass normally has, beyond what almost everyone thought that glass could tolerate. Seeing these pieces made me feel apprehensive, afraid that they might break right in front of my eyes.
The biographical data on Dale Chihuly tell that he is a native of Washington (state) and went to design school at the U of W. But he hit the right buttons when he started to work with glass, hot glass, to be more precise. In his pursuit of knowledge about glass, Chihuly spent some time in Venice, and Murano, to learn more about what the Italians had discovered in their centuries of glassmaking. And he began to envision some really far-out ways to push glass to make it more thin, more attenuated, more artistic, more sculptural. This practical medium of glass, being pushed beyond what were thought to be its limits, and made into astonishing shapes, colors, articles far from looking like any glass anyone had seen before! Art glass, blurring the distinctions between “art” and “craft” which were established during the Renaissance.
The glass medium is hostile. Hot glass requires manipulating, blowing, trimming, picking up more, rolling, stopping, pulling, and rolling it, never letting go of the focus. The glassblower gets burned, singed, and burned some more… and mastery makes the glass an item of tremendous beauty, doing what other artists can only wish for – catching light, bouncing it, redirecting it, shattering it, deflecting it, working it over. Dale Chihuly has gone with glass where no one has gone before. He is the world’s acknowledged master of hot glass design and execution. His working crew is kept very busy. And he lives and works with glass in an earthquake zone, the Seattle area.
Go To Page: 1 2
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Gretchen Wms. Jurek's Visual Arts topic, please visit the Discussions page.