Chihuly

If you are planning on visiting Seattle and intend visiting the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibition in the near future by all means avoid this blog. In fact don’t click on the link. But if you plan on not ever going to the exhibit, by all means read on and click on the links.

Other-worldly initial sculpture. Essentially the indoor part of the museum in the exhibition is in a black space.

The only exception to the indoor black space was this ceiling montage, which effectively was featureless except for the ceiling ornaments.

The ceiling mosaic. This is a close up of part of the ceiling. The ceiling (3 m by 6 m) was covered with these transparent, back-lit, glass plates. The central red-one was about 60 cm in diameter.

It almost seems a shame to provide a commentary for these pictures, but the words do help make sure the pictures don’t shift too much. I reminded of an Island here.

Here are two boats filled with baubles Spilling over on to a mirror. The baubles are of different, colours, shapes and sizes.

These chandeliers were fun, so to speak. But I have to admit these were not my favourite pieces.

This throws me back to a biology school trip to Scarborough, and studying the tidal pools. The seaweed with bladders.

The interesting thing here is the camera (with flash) and what the eye sees do not match.

Here I was really surprised by this piece. The fifth sculpture from the right above, what I think have been described at the back as Macchia. The two pieces at the back on the right look predominantly a greeny yellow. But without the flash they are predominantly red.

Here we start to move outside first into the glass conservatory.

A riot of chaos … not random but definitely chaotic.

Of course there is a little theatre showing videos of the process and several exhibitions. One the comments that Dale made was to the effect that if he had to think about what he was doing, he did not know what he was doing. He was also seemed aware of the chaotic nature of the process, not having full control of the way the forms shape themselves.

If you have only time to visit either the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibition or the Space Needle (next door), the exhibition wins hands down for me. Here’s a little bit about the man Dale Chihuly. I mistakenly called the exhibit a museum and a employee corrected me that it was an Exhibition. Apparently he has a thirty year lease, and it opened in 2012.