like being inside a Tobey painting?

2002 Delores Tarzan Ament:

"...a shimmering light that reflects the idea of mist still permeates much of [Northwest] art, regardless of style. And symbols--birds, the moon, a hail of strokes reminiscent of Mark Tobey's 'white writing'--make regular appearances. Most prominent are references to water--particularly rain.

The Northwest School has left an indelible imprint on the region's art. Its themes and techniques have jumped to new media--a step that had already begun in the 1970s when Doris Chase moved into producing films and video. In the nearly fifty years since Tobey and Graves left the Northwest, and others of their circle have dispersed or died, far more Northwest art has moved into three dimensions, and many more women artists have emerged, particularly as sculptors. Norie Sato and Nancy Mee layer clear glass in ways that build transparency into substance, much as fog over Northwest water transforms Northwest air. Julie Spiedel's totemic bronzes and Steve Jensen's wooden poles carved with formalized patterns of water are contemporary echoes of the symbolic carved totem poles traditional to some Northwest tribes. Gerard Tsutakawa continues the tradition of his father, using classical Japanese forms as departures for bronze sculpture.

[...] Nothing reflects the change in Northwest art more dramatically than the phenomenon of Dale Chihuly, who was designated in 1992 as America's first Living National Treasure. Chihuly entered the art scene unremarkably in the early 1970s, at Seattle's Foster/White Gallery, with a show of simple glass tumblers featuring embedded patterns that harked back to the weaving of Northwest Indian baskets. Year by year, he expanded the scope of art glass to audacious new applications, with a genius for promotion that soon had even his coworkers calling him simply Chihuly, like a rock-star phenomenon. He became the greatest impresario of art promotion since Salvador Dali, with his own publishing company to document his work. He even founded a glass museum in Tacoma, where he had grown up unremarkably as the son of a butcher.

The difference between Chihuly's style and the understated, often reclusive nature of earlier Northwest artists can be understood in part if we recall that while painting is a solitary and contemplative activity, glass is blown in a team context, surrounded by noise and fire, with the necessity for constant awareness of the dangers attendant to molten glass and sharp broken shards. Glass work is intense. Physical exertion is significant; appetites are hearty.

No one could be oblivious to glass art after Chihuly hit the headlines. Every art gallery in the greater Northwest, it seems, represents at least one glass artist. Most have more than one. Because he has made glass art the trendiest, most collectible art in the world, all glass artists--including some more gifted than he--receive more recognition and higher prices for their work.

At first glance, nothing might seem more radically different from the whisper-soft imagery of Northwest art fifty years ago than massive installations such as Chihuly's feat of suspending glass chandeliers that resemble gaudy, multi-breasted fetishes over the Grand Canal of Venice. Lost again. Glass is entirely about light. Chihuly calls it 'the light of the future and past.'

Chihuly rejects the idea of symbolism in his work and he denies narrative content. Yet he speaks movingly of glass as a magical material made of sand and breath, and of the marvel of human breathe giving life to fragile matter. And he has chosen such forms such as the mountain and the moon, which have a long history in Northwest art. Not to mention connections with water such as Seaforms, the ruffling seashell shapes with which he scored his first major success.

[...] In a dozen individual pieces [at the Citadel], Chihuly reiterated Northwest themes in three light-chomping dimensions. The largest Crystal Mountain [...], was formed of rebar welded in random cross slashes, embedded with chunks of the pink glassy plastic Chihuly calls Polyvitro. The mountain rose as a web of crystals 33 feet high, emanating the recorded prayers of three religions. Anyone who entered its interior was bathed in sparkling pink light. From that vantage, looking up in any direction yielded the sensation of being inside a Mark Tobey painting, with the famous slashes of white writing having become black, as if one had walked through the looking glass and found the world reversed.

[...] The Northwest School--the school that never really existed--is not only alive and well in art today, it is making appearances around the world. Each of the artists who helped to define the look of Northwest art half a century ago had a markedly individual style. Yet the more personal their imagery and symbolism, the more universal it appeared in affirming the unity of all life."

Arment, D.T. "Now" in Irridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art. U of W press, Seattle and London, Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner. 2002.