In this time line I pull quotes to illustrate a thread in popular and scholarly writing and criticism about glass. Here we will see current glass artists defending their art against the accusations and separating themselves from these stereotypes and, hopefully, find out how and where the now-common opinion was born. Fundamentally, the general thesis seems to be born of the question, What Is Art? This question I will leave to others to answer, here I am only documenting the written history of a popular way of thinking and a popular taste.
1995 Robin Updike:
"Cameras click and video cameras hum as William Morris, Dante Marioni and Lino Tagliapietra, all stars of the glass art scene, trot through their repertoire of crowd-pleasing skills.
They plunge molten glass globes into fiery furnaces. They spin the globes on rods like circus performers whirling plates on sticks. They wedge slab-sized wooden spatulas against the twirling, glowing glass. Flaming sparks fly through the air. Murmured oohs and aahs drift through the 50 or so onlookers at the Pilchuck Glass School hot shop in Stanwood. It's a mesmerizing show.
Meanwhile, just outside the hot shop, Dale Chihuly is being interviewed by a camera crew from CBS' "Sunday Morning." The shop is an open-sided, shake-roofed, octagonal pavillion that night and day hums with activity. Nestled as it is in the woods - a pleasure dome for glassblowers - there may be no more idyllic hot shop in the world.
A crowd has gathered to watch. Chihuly is unmistakable with his black eye patch, Trotskyite hair and trademark paint-splattered shoes. And he is, after all, not only the most famous glass artist since Louis Comfort Tiffany, but the founding spirit behind Pilchuck.
A little later will come the smoked-salmon feed for 400 served on paper plates, picnic-style, on the clearing in front of the rustic lodge - a Pilchuck potlatch - and the ceremonial burying of the time capsule, to be dug up in the year 2021 on the school's 50th anniversary. The school is this summer celebrating the beginning of it's 25th year, and calling it an anniversary.
There is also a ritual crowning of Anne Gould Hauberg on the back of a flat-bed pick-up. Hauberg and her former husband, John Hauberg, donated the 64-square-mile, bosky Stanwood site to found the glass school in 1971, and she is still considered the fairy godmother of the place. A glass crown has been made for her. She grins and vamps as it is placed on her head.
This is followed by a brief speech cheerleading for the school's $3.4 million capital campaign. The speaker: Jon Shirley, former Microsoft president and vintage car collector/mechanic, and now a Pilchuck advisory council member. The school needs improved kilns and a staff bath house, among other physical improvements, and it wants a $2 million scholarship endowment. Mark Haley, former college art student, one-time sculptor of fountains, current president of Brown & Haley candy company of Tacoma, and Pilchuck board president, also makes a few remarks.
Pilchuck has long attracted board members who are not only wealthy, successful and relatively youthful but, to a certain degree, hip.
Watching from the sidelines, a famous art critic who has been flown up to Seattle for a Seattle Art Museum seminar on glass art, seems baffled by the cheerful camaraderie and air of congratulatory goodwill. The day-long party strikes him as "tribal."
He wasn't far from the mark. The July 21 party was a ceremonial rite of passage of the Northwest clan of glass. Pilchuck has turned Seattle into the glass art capital of the U.S. Even, some say, of the world.
Woodstock for art hippies
Since 1971, Pilchuck has gone from a primitive summer camp for counterculture glassblowers with artistic aspirations - a Woodstock for art hippies - to a world-reknowned school of glass. Each summer the school attracts a teaching lineup of some of the world's leading glass artists, as well as acclaimed non-glass artists drawn to Pilchuck's ecumenical philosophy about art.
Tagliapietra, for instance, was a master glassblower at the legendary Venini glass factory in Murano, an island off Venice, Italy, before Chihuly brought him to teach at Pilchuck. Bertil Vallien, a Swedish master of cast glass sculpture and a Pilchuck regular, is one of the head designers at Kosta Boda glass factory in Sweden. This year Pilchuck students came from 24 countries and 36 U.S. states.
It's not uncommon these days to hear comparisons between Pilchuck and the glass art scene it has spawned in Western Washington, and the historic glass community around Venice, where for centuries master craftsmen produced some of the world's most sought-after goblets and glassware. Even the aesthetics of traditional Venetian goblets and vessels have been imported to Pilchuck. Marioni's classic forms are considered direct descendants of the Venetian style.
Says Douglas Heller, owner of Heller Gallery in New York, one of the nation's most established glass galleries, "The Pilchuck culture, which is an outgrowth of Tagliapietra and Chihuly, is a return to Venetian classicism. Tagliapietra represents a lifetime of achievement. He's an Italian maestro.
"But suddenly there is a bunch of these Pilchuck-trained Young Turks challenging his work," said Heller. "All of a sudden Pilchuck is like a little Venice, and that's a brilliant achievement."
The Seattle emphasis
Even casual observers of the regional art scene know that Seattle and glass art are synonymous. Walk into an upscale retail building, such as City Centre on Fifth Avenue, or a hotel, such as the Seattle Sheraton, and instead of seeing paintings on the walls you're likely to see glass sculpture in cases. Such individual tastemakers as Jeff and Susan Brotman (he co-founded Costco), Jon and Mary Shirley, and Jack and Rebecca Benaroya (he is one of the area's major real estate developers) all have sizable collections of Northwest glass.
Seattle's role as the nation's glass art center has been particularly noticeable this summer. There have been glass shows virtually every month at several galleries. Pilchuck anniversary banners hang everywhere. The Seattle Art Museum organized a special glass exhibit (still on view) and hosted a day-long seminar on glass art last month. The next day many of the 300 or so glass artists in Western Washington opened their studios to the public.
One of the art exhibits at Bumbershoot next weekend will be a 25-year retrospective of the work of Pilchuck-affiliated artists. When the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner re-opens in October, a gallery donated by the Benaroyas will be devoted solely to glass; the opening show will be works by Pilchuck's big-name artists. And though it is still some years in the future, plans are under way for for a museum of contemporary glass in Tacoma, Chihuly's hometown.
And the nonprofit, private Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle has become an in-city glass center. Many of its instructors and staffers also are affiliated with Pilchuck. In the Seattle glass community, all roads eventually lead back to Pilchuck.
Not since the ascendancy in the '40s and '50s of the so-called "mystic painters of the Northwest" - Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Anderson and friends - has Seattle been so closely associated with a particular art movement. And it's fair to say that without Pilchuck, there would be no Seattle glass culture. Some say that without glass, Seattle's entire art scene would be less dynamic.
"I think Pilchuck is really more essential to this city than the museum," said Linda Farris, owner of Linda Farris Gallery. "Pilchuck constantly has groups of people coming through here on this quest for glass.
"But they buy other art, too," said Farris. "One of the glass collectors who was in town for the last Pilchuck auction bought one of Sherry Markovitz's abstract works," she said, referring to a Seattle sculptor who makes beaded works.
The glass detractors
That's not to say there aren't plenty of people who dismiss glass as pretty but dull. Crowds flock to see Chihuly exhibits; SAM's '92 Chihuly show drew two to three times as many people as nearly any show since. But there are painters, sculptors, print makers and others who roll their eyes at the mention of glass.
Though by now it's a weary debate, there are those who still consider all glass art to be craft, a supposedly less intellectual pursuit than art. The same detractors describe glass artists as buff glassblowers making oversized candy dishes and paperweights.
In part it's sheer envy. Glass artists seem to have more fun. Judging from the attention they get and their sales, they're also popular.
Working at something that for practical reasons must be accomplished in teams, glass artists not only make art together but often share social lives. On First Thursdays, clusters of them make the rounds of gallery openings. While painters toil alone in their studios, glass artists, especially those who work with blown glass, buzz around in their undershirts, their studios cozy and warm from the furnaces, boom boxes turned up. Chihuly's Lake Union factory, called The Boathouse, is legendary for its parties.
SAM and Pilchuck, eager to validate glass' artistic merit, called their July seminar "Contemporary Glass: Seduction vs. Intellect." But judging from the growing collections of contemporary glass at museums, many curators already have decided glass belongs in art museums.
The Tacoma Art Museum has a Chihuly collection and SAM continues to acquire glass. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, works by Seattle-area artists Ginny Ruffner, William Morris, Flora Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick, as well as Chihuly, will be among those exhibited in a show of contemporary glass to open at the museum in April and run through next fall. The pieces are from the museum's collection.
Jane Adlin, Metropolitan Museum research associate of 20th-century design, said the U.S. is where the most innovative contemporary glass is coming from, and that Seattle "is the country's glass center. Pilchuck is the big place for glass," she said.
"We all talk about the Pilchuck spirit, but don't know how to define it," says Haley, the Pilchuck board president. "It's a sense of community, and the fact that not very long ago the art form was relatively unknown, so there's still a pioneer sense about the place . . .
"It's more than Dale Chihuly's Pied-Piperish personality. There's a sense of pushing new boundaries, finding new opportunities, of breaking through.
"Until Pilchuck, glass was an unsung art. That's no longer true."
Updike, R. "Capital Of Glass -- Pilchuck Puts Seattle On The Map -- With Ceremony And Fun, A Family Of Artists Celebrate A Major Milestone In Their Movement" The Seattle Times. August 27, 1995. Website Accessed May 27, 2009. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?slug=2138386&date=19950827
1995 Regina Hackett:"
If Dale Chihuly's name passes into the language, as Thomas Bowdler's did in honor of his zeal as a censor, it will mean to dazzle (or daunt) with excess.
After making forests, giant butterflies, mutant swamp flowers and multiple clusters of swollen, pendulant breasts, the country's No. 1 glassman now plans to hang five of his 2,000-pound, vividly colored chandeliers over the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy.
Son of a Tacoma meatcutter, 53-year-old ((age)) Chihuly is now in residence with his crew in a tiny Finnish village called Nuutajarvi, population 400. With the blessings of the government, he has taken over the town's traditional glass factory and turned it into the temporary headquarters of Chihuly Inc.
Saying he owned the place would be understatement. Not satisfied with his shower, he commanded the Finnish army to build him a bathtub. Two hours later, it was ready for his leisurely soak. When he mentioned that a helicopter might be useful for his film crew, one was provided, an old, lumbering, camouflage-green Russian model that made canoes rock as it hovered overhead.
FINLAND IS the first stop on what Chihuly hopes will be a five-city glass-blowing tour. At each stop he plans to create a 2,000-pound glass chandelier, among other things. These are the chandeliers that will hang over Venice's Grand Canal, giving the gondoliers below something to worry about besides rain.
Actually, they won't have to worry much. Nobody is likely to be felled by a falling Chihuly. The man is excessive but he's not careless. If he hangs his pieces above the canal, they'll stay there until he takes them down.
Who's paying for all this?
``I am so far," he said, speaking from a portable phone down by the Nuutajarvian river as he directed a film crew to shoot an installation and sent various assistants scurrying with a seemingly endless series of requests.
``It cost me $200,000 for the Finnish trip," he continued. ``All I have to do is sell one chandelier and it's paid for. The studio work (for the five-city tour) will run about $1 million, and if I do a film in each place, the films will be a million each."
Money doesn't worry him. Expenses at his Seattle headquarters, known as the Boathouse, ordinarily run anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000 per month, he said.
Of course, a project such as ``Chihuly Over Venice" takes more than dough. He doesn't have permission to hang his chandeliers in Venice but feels confident he can get it. ``We're talking to the appropriate people," he said.
After spending two weeks in Finland, Chihuly plans to fly to Berlin to see the Bulgarian-born artist known as Christo wrap the Reichstag, the city's war-scarred old parliament building, in silvery fabric with blue ropes for bows. Afterward Chihuly goes to Venice where he hopes to nail down his installation plans.
``Christo is a big influence," Chihuly said. Christo is certainly the model Chihuly needs now. For this project, Chihuly will need Christo's organizational skills.
``I'm taking it one step at a time," he said, and then got distracted. ``Check the light in those trees," he called out to photographer Russell Johnson. ``It's too late to shoot. You need to be here at dawn."
CHIHULY ISN'T just directing teams of glass blowers in Finland. He's making installations as he goes. At his request, a crew stripped the leaves from a pair of 40-foot trees by the river and hung long, translucent glass cylinders on the straight, bare branches, ruby red on one and turquoise on the other.
As he spoke on the phone, three different film crews (one Finnish, one from KCTS-Channel 9 in Seattle and one hired by Chihuly) were focused on parts of the chandeliers, reportedly shaped like squashes or sides of ham, that were floating down the river in a series of photo opportunities.
Chihuly took 35 people with him to Finland, including eight Seattle glass blowers. He's being assisted by 12 Finnish glass-blowing students and 10 master Finnish blowers. They work in four teams, blowing an average of 2,200 pounds of glass daily, with a top figure of 3,000 pounds last Tuesday.
THE SUCCESS of art production isn't usually measured by its poundage. But while Chihuly set weight goals for the teams, he also set high standards for shape, volume, color brilliance and overall impact.
He has the show-business skills of a P.T. Barnum, and yet he's also an artist of consequence. He's the single most important force in elevating the status of glass art from fringe to something close to mainstream. He has forced the art world to reconsider its patronizing attitude toward decorative arts in general and proved that decorative arts have vast appeal to the general public.
His retrospective in 1992 at the Seattle Art Museum broke attendance records and proved exceedingly popular in each venue to which it traveled.
Chihuly and his crew plan to set up shop in Ireland this fall, followed by glass-blowing stops in France, the Czech Republic and Italy."
Hackett, R. "Euro Chihuly, America's premier glass artist is set to dazzle the continent." Seattle Post Intelligencer. June 19, 1995. accessed September 8, 2009. http://www.seattlepi.com/archives/1995/9506190064.asp
