Dale Chihuly’s exhibit opens at the VMFA

Samantha Foster
Spectrum Editor

World-famous glass artist Dale Chihuly’s advice to young artists is to not go to art school because it is “very difficult to teach art.”

That being said, Chihuly attended several art schools and was a professor at several schools before he unexpectedly found himself drawn to the glass medium, an art form he had no formal training in.

“I had a little studio in the basement of the house of a friend of mine and one night I melted some stained glass and rolled my pipe into it … and I blew a bubble. I had never seen glass blowing. That was the “A-ha!” moment for me,” Chihuly said.

Chihuly’s work is currently on display as a temporary exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibit features nine installations, some of which are designed specifically for the VMFA. Some of the larger pieces in the collection include the “Blue Ridge Chandelier” in the Cochrane Atrium and “Red Reeds,” which was installed in the Anne Cobb Gottwald Reflecting Pool in August to preview the exhibit.

The VMFA director, Alex Nyerges, introduced Chihuly’s work with great respect to his art.

“If you have never experienced Dale Chihuly’s work in person, or on any scale outside of an object or two, I can promise you (that) you are in for a new experience,” he said last week when Chihuly visited the VMFA.

Chihuly’s work is in more than 200 museum collections and is now in more than 10,000 square feet of temporary exhibition space at the VMFA.

Upon entering the exhibit, guests are greeted by the “Fiori and Float Boats,” which were inspired by Chihuly’s earlier work, “Chihuly Over Venice,” in which he hung chandeliers over the Venice canals. “Fiori and Float Boats” are two wooden boats, each overflowing with tentacle looking pieces and large, round balls.

While making “Chihuly Over Venice,” Chihuly was curious to see how his work would look floating down the canals in Venice, so he said he threw pieces into the water and hired local teenagers with boats to retrieve them. These boats filled with glass pieces inspired the “Fiori and Float Boats.” Once Chihuly had the pieces back from the teenagers, he threw them into the water again.

One of the most well-loved Chihuly pieces is the “Persian Ceiling,” which has been installed in various buildings and museums worldwide. “The Persian Ceiling” at the VMFA features 1,000 pieces of sculpture, all resting on a clear glass ceiling that is brightly lit from above the glass pieces.

The biggest installation at the VMFA of Chihuly’s work is “Laguna Torcello,” which features over 1,500 glass pieces.

“When I build a piece, I just put whatever feels good to go inside (the artwork). We build everything full-scale before we send it out to a museum,” Chihuly said and then explained that none of his pieces are numbered for displays.

“I was putting one up in the White House, for the millennium, in the lobby, … it was a pair of towers and Hillary Clinton came by and she said ‘Do you number those pieces?’ and I said ‘Do I look like the type of guy that would number them?’”

Since losing the sight in his left eye and the temporary use of his arm in 1976, Chihuly has worked with a team of glassblowers. For each piece, about eight to 12 people work at a time, but Chihuly’s entire team is about 90 people.

“I like to think that I have some of the best glass blowers in the world,” Chihuly said.

Nyerges described Chihuly’s work as something that has taken the art of glassblowing to a new level of experience.

“What Dale Chihuly has done for the art of glass is almost difficult to describe,” he said. “In the last 40 years, what Dale Chihuly has done is elevate glass, not just to an art form, but to an experience (that) you’re going to enjoy beyond anything you could possibly imagine.”

Chihuly at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts will be on display from Oct. 20 to Feb. 10, 2013. Tickets are $20 or $16 for students with a valid ID. The exhibit is also free to all members of the VMFA.