The man who saw greatness in glass
While he no longer blows his own pieces, artist Dale Chihuly tells Lucinda Everett he’s still the gaffer
When an artist’s career moves into its sixth decade, you expect a glittering life retrospective. Not a show chock-full of new pieces and processes. But Dale Chihuly, the man who changed the face of glass art, has made his new exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery in London just that.
If his name isn’t familiar, his work will be – pieces so brightly coloured, often vast in scale and so organically shaped you wonder, for a second, if you’ve stumbled upon some exotic plant. Chihuly’s 27ft Rotunda Chandelier, a writhing mass of green and blue fronds, has hung in the V&A’S entrance since his show there in 1991; his 2,100 sq ft interpretation of spring flowers fills the ceiling of the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas. His work is in the permanent collections of some 200 museums and his collectors include Hillary Clinton and Sir Elton John.
But if Chihuly the brand is a multi-million dollar business, Chihuly the man is surprisingly unassuming. Wearing paint-splattered boots and a patch over his left eye (he lost sight in it after a car crash in 1976), he is stout and smiley and speaks in a quiet growl – slowly, succinctly, pragmatically.
“It was logical to show them over water,” he says of one installation, a rippling black pool reflecting neon sculptures rising out of the water and hanging above. “I’ve got a pool in my studio with about 1,000 pieces of glass underneath. If the water’s still, it looks one way. As soon as you move the water, it ripples and it’s entirely different. That was the inspiration.”
Born in 1941 in Tacoma, Washington, he studied weaving and interior design before discovering glassblowing in 1965. He blew his first bubble with a homemade pipe and enrolled in the US’S only glassblowing course. But it was working with the glass masters of Murano that taught him his biggest lesson – “approaching things in a team”.
By the Seventies, the damage to his eye plus a shoulder injury meant he could no longer handle glassblowing. So he became the orchestrator – sketching designs and directing. “If you’re the gaffer [glassblower] you can only watch what you’re making. But there are a lot of other things going on. I can oversee everything.”
Usually the team work from dawn to dusk, but they’ve been making Rotolos – coils of thick glass spiralling up from a hefty base. “They’re the most complicated pieces I’ve ever done,” explains Chihuly, “twisting the glass around a pipe heated to 800 degrees. The finished pieces can weigh 130lb. The team began complaining that their backs were hurting so we only make them in the morning.”
Many of the Rotolos were blown especially for this show but it’s slow work. “We make two a day and only about 50 per cent are successful,” says Chihuly. “They take eight days to cool, and they’ll come out looking good, but when you start examining them, you find little cracks.”
Chihuly’s role as orchestrator doesn’t stop in his hot shop; he curates every show meticulously, even building replicas of specific gallery spaces. “No one ever handles the glass but us,” says Chihuly. Installing the Halcyon show took them six days.
As well his other works, including lithographs and light drawings (backlit paintings on glass), Chihuly produces documentaries and coffee books. I ask if he will keep it all up for as long as he can. “Probably”, he smiles.
He’s already in talks about his next project – a new chapel filled with his work. Quite the grand plan for a 76-year-old. “Glass is just such a great material,” he says. “You never get tired of it.”