Field Trip: Chihuly Garden and Glass

It has been a while since I’ve taken our readers on a field trip, so when I had the opportunity recently to visit the Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle, Washington, I couldn’t wait to share the experience. The Chihuly Garden and Glass is a museum that exhibits blown glass sculptures of renowned artist Dale Chihuly. The museum displays Chihuly’s pieces in eight indoor galleries and within beautiful gardens on the museum grounds. I knew I couldn’t leave Seattle without visiting this unique museum directly below the Space Needle.

The Artist: Dale Chihuly was born in September of 1941 in Tacoma, Washington. He attended the University of Washington in Seattle to study interior design and traveled the globe exploring the world of art.  In 1965, he began experimenting with glassblowing. He received a full scholarship to study under Harvey Littleton (the first to establish a glass program in the U.S.) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He graduated from the university with a Master of Science degree in sculpture in 1967. In 1971, Chihuly co-founded the Pilchuck Glass School and the Hilltop Artists program. His passion for working with glass led to decades of experimentation from traditional work to massive architectural installations in public spaces, museums, and botanical gardens around the world. Chihuly had a lifelong interest in gardens and architecture, using color, form, light, and space to create immersive experiences.

The Museum: In 2010, the Space Needle Corporation proposed a Chihuly exhibition at the Seattle Center park and entertainment complex, which the city council approved in April of 2011. On May 21, 2012, the Chihuly Garden and Glass opened, showcasing the studio glass of Dale Chihuly. The museum comprises three primary components: the Gallery, the Glasshouse, and the Garden.

• The Gallery: The displays in the gallery represent over 40 years of Chihuly’s work, from tabletop sculpture to massive installations. His experimentation with color, form, and light is apparent within each piece. As I walked around each corner, it was as if I had been miniaturized and transported to a world made of glass. It felt so immersive, like a ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’ moment, where I was in awe of the scale of some of his pieces. Massive glass chandelier-like sculptures hung from the ceiling, and literal boatloads of glass spheres sat at your feet. It was almost as if you were placed in a glass bottle yourself, seeing the world entirely behind glass.

Also on display are some of his drawings, which are a large part of his creative process. Many of Chihuly’s Drawings have become works of art in their own right.

• The Glasshouse: The centerpiece of Chihuly Garden and Glass is a 40-foot-tall, 45,000-square-foot glasshouse. Chihuly worked closely with architects to design this one-of-a-kind structure as a nod to his lifelong appreciation for conservatories. The glass and steel structure houses one of Chihuly’s largest suspended sculptures, a massive 100-foot-long sculpture made of hundreds of brightly colored hand-blown forms. This sculpture, with its shades of red and orange, was truly awe-inspiring. I marveled at the mechanics of hoisting such a large sculpture above our heads. It reminded me of a ship-in-a-bottle situation where the sculpture was the ship and the Glasshouse the bottle. All the sunlight that came flooding in through the Glasshouse windows played beautifully across the suspended sculpture, which resembled open flowers reaching for the sun. This piece was truly a sight to behold.

• The Gardens: While Chihuly has displayed his artwork in historic gardens around the world, the gardens at Chihuly Garden and Glass were his first opportunity to collaborate with a landscape designer to create a new garden from scratch. The urban garden features trees, shrubs, plants, and flowers that complement Chihuly’s work based on color, form, and scale, creating an immersive experience that changes seasonally. The gardens were my favorite component of the museum. Seeing how Chihuly blended his organic pieces within the natural setting of a garden was a beautiful collision of manufactured, intertwined with nature.  It was apparent how much thought had been put into blending the two to create a massive piece of art that you could walk through. A truly immersive artistic experience. The plantings were carefully chosen to complement the color and form of each glass sculpture, blending beautifully, as if the manufactured pieces were not manufactured at all, but rather part of their natural environment. It was a beautiful and thought-provoking installation, and I left inspired to incorporate some meaningful sculpture into my own garden at home. If you’re feeling inspired as well, The Chihuly Garden and Glass offers a master plant list on their website that lists the botanical specimens within the garden.

I think that visiting the Chihuly Garden and Glass is worth the trip if you’re in Seattle. The massive scale of Chihuly’s glass sculptures is awe-inspiring, and the colors and forms of his pieces are intriguing and uplifting. I hope you enjoyed our field trip to this unique museum and that it inspired you, as it did me.

Sources: Dale Chihuly, Chihuly’s Life, Chihuly Garden and Glass