Category: September 2022

In this project, children submit designs and the winning designs are created by the glass artists. They make two glass pieces, one for the child and one for the museum. I loved them!

Be sure to read the kids’ explanations on the plaques. Cracks me up!

This next one is my total favorite – an orca in a garage band with an eye patch! (I presume a nod to Dale Chihuly?) How many regional references can this child cram into one concept? Amazing.

“The rest is normal”, lol. It was delightful!

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After watching the artists blowing glass in the hot shop, we visited the gallery. Not all of the glass art was blown glass. Here’s a disappearing ball of color:

This chair was really amazing, but I think they could have exhibited it better with more lighting and a darker background. It was hard to see! Maybe that was the point.

You can definitely tell it’s not all Chihuly in this exhibit, lol.

These were large, wall-sized exhibits. Clear glass and shadow.

These squid-in-glass were a little strange, but it seemed like it would take some skill to make.

In one of the rooms in the gallery there was a fair amount of unnerving or grotesque art, which I ignored. Sorry, I didn’t take any photos of it. I just like simple, pretty things, lol.

I also like things that reflect a regional sense of place. Jellyfish are common in the Puget Sound.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

The week after we went to the Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle, we went to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. Of the two, we preferred the Tacoma Museum of Glass because it was larger, contained a hot shop, and was generally more interesting. It contained some exhibits by Dale Chihuly, but it showcased other glass artists as well. However, if you’re specifically interesting in Chihuly’s work, the Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle did a better job with his exhibits.

We started with the hot shop where they make glass art. They have two primary methods of heating the glass; the torch, and the “glory hole”, which is a furnace. Here is a short movie of them heating glass with a torch.

They inflate the hot glass by blowing down the long handle of a blowpipe. It seems like it would take a lot of lung strength but they told us, no, you only blow softly or you will explode the glass. When they blow on the pipe, you can’t really see much happening – the glass just slowly gets a little larger.

In this next video they transferred their glass from one pipe to another one in order to turn the glass around. First they put a small blob of warm glass on the end of the new pipe (the orange blob). Then they stick the new pipe with the warm glass into the back end of the glass piece. Then they crack the glass off of the original pipe.

They break glass in a controlled manner by scoring it where they want it to break, and sometimes also dripping some water on it the break point, and then striking it sharply and quickly but without too much force. Sometimes the glass piece will shatter at this point, and they have to start all over again.

When the piece is done, they crack it off the pipe and put it into the annealer (a hot oven) to cool it slowly. 

It was a very interesting demonstration. One of the artists explained what was going on as we watched. They also had an overhead screen where they projected explanatory slides, or a close-up camera view of the action below.

There were elevated walkways along the sides and back where we could stand and look down.

The artist in the photo below was off to one side, shaping a piece of blown glass. We could stand nearly directly above him on the walkway and watch. He rolls the pipe back and forth on the two rails with his left hand, turning the glass, while holding the mold steady against the glass with his right hand.

In addition to molds, they also use stacks of wet newspaper and wooden paddles to shape the glass while it’s hot.

Here’s the audience watching.

The architecture is cool. This is the ceiling.

In addition to the hot shop, there was a museum gallery, a children’s design section (which was truly fun), and outdoor exhibits. I will post about those next!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.