At 75, famed glass artist opens up about mental-health challenges
their art in the city’s canals. He had no plan and no funding, but she was eager to help him realize his vision — one that would eventually be depicted in the public TV documentary “Chihuly Over Venice.”
Six months later, they traveled to an exhibit opening at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.
“It was like the lights went out,” she said, choking back a sob. “All of a sudden, the guy who was interested in everything — that guy wasn’t there.”
Dale Chihuly remained quiet as his wife described that moment. A tear fell from beneath the recognizable eyepatch he has worn since he lost sight in his left eye in a 1976 car crash.
Although the mood swings were new to Leslie Chihuly at the time, they were familiar to the other artists with whom Chihuly had worked.
Joey Kirkpatrick met him in 1979, when she attended Pilchuck Glass School, which Chihuly founded in the woods north of Seattle in 1971. At the small summer workshop, the students constructed their own shelter. She and her partner, Flora Mace, spent many hours watching movies with him during his down periods.
“What amazed me about it is his persistence at picking the thing, his creative life, that would pull him along or keep him going through those times,” she said. “When he was up, he could call you up at Pilchuck on a Sunday night and say, ‘Meet me at the airport at 10 tomorrow, we’ve got a flight to Pittsburgh to go to some demonstration.’ It was always exciting. When he was down, there wasn’t that. It was quieter.”