Chihuly: Garden And Glass

Chihuly: Garden and Glass was a concept that came from the people who own the Space Needle. They felt that having the glass creations of artist Dale Chihuly right there at Seattle Center, would not only give the visitors to Seattle a good chance to see some of his work, it would bring people to the Space Needle.

It was a fabulous idea. As the Space Needle itself brings some of the visitors, Chihuly brings others and all enjoy the beauty of two very different exhibits.

There are several areas of the exhibit. You first see some of Chihuly's southwest creations. As you follow the crowd into different rooms, there is a room with a ceiling filled with glass bowls, another room with glass forms and glass cactus', another with these bowls you are seeing in the second photo. There was also a boat filled with balls of glass, I liked it so much, that I bought a refrigerator magnet of it. My only souvenir of our trip.

Then there is a room with all the chandeliers that hung in Venice, back in the 90's. I had a poster up in my office on Sunset, of the show Chihuly Over Venice. As I walked into the room with the chandeliers, I immediately recognized several of them. We aired the show (one of the first shows totally shot in HD) over and over and over again on something called DT2A (our first all digital PBS channel). Over the course of 9 years the amount of airtime Dale got, was worth more than money itself. He became a superstar of the glass blowing world.

His pieces are totally out of my price range, but I loved taking photos of many of them at this museum.

I don't quite understand this piece. It was out in the garden area. The guide said that it is made of some substance that is not glass. The reason why, is that it would weigh too much and take forever to cool down, when creating. It is made of polyvitro. As it ends up, he made several sculptures using this substance.

It looks like rock candy, to me. :-)

Here is what I found online. "The sculpture was created from Polyvitro, a material that Chihuly created when he needed a lighter material than blown glass when he was installing a chandelier in the Sydney Opera House, Ziegler said.

“They actually take large chunks of glass and they break it,” he said. “Then they create these molds from that and then they pour this material into it.”

The individual Polyvitro pieces are shaped like crystals and attached to the central steel armature by stainless steel rods. Some of the pieces were used in a similar sculpture in a museum in Jerusalem."

Photo 1 is out in the garden. Look at those unusual flowers that are in front of the blue glass pieces. The gardens are top notch, btw.

Photo 2 are some of the bowls he has created.

Photo 3 is the rose sculpture. Check out the beautiful pieces in front of it. The entire garden area was that way, one beautiful thing after another.

All in all, it was a total blast, seeing all the many sculptures he and his team have made, during a long and productive career.