Museum Gallery Visit I: Chihuly Garden and Glass

 During the summer, my family and I visited the Chihuly Garden and Glass Art Museum in Seattle. The museum is dedicated to artist Dale Chihuly, who is famous for his work with glass sculpting/blowing. Prior to visiting, I never knew that glass, a material that I've always considered to be rigid, could be manipulated in the most interesting ways to produce beautiful sculptures.

The most ordinary kind of material such as glass can still be turned into an unexpected work of art. Because most of the art I'm exposed to is at school, I'm only aware and have only really thought about types of three-dimensional art that are more common such as sculpting with simpler materials like paper or plaster. It was really interesting for me to be able to learn that glass, a material that is, although common, very fragile and quite dangerous, can be sculpted and shaped into any kind of form (but only when it's extremely hot and right out of the oven).

Seeing an artist's process of thinking are sometimes more intriguing than his/her's final work. After Chihuly became an expert at glassblowing through tons of practice, he was finally able to start brainstorming his creativity with what he wanted to do with glass. I especially loved how the museum even included Chihuly's sketches and idea boards so that we can see what was going through his mind before having a structured idea of how to shape the glass. 

Sometimes you need science to help you be able to produce unique forms of art. After watching documentaries of Dale Chihuly working, I noticed that the process of glassblowing requires so much time and effort in terms of trying to figure out the right ways to do it. Before Chihuly was even able to get creative and colorful with glass, he spent so much time of his life initially figuring out the right temperatures, timings, and methods to be able to produce stable and smooth glass shapes. 

Putting nature's art and manmade art together in the same space carefully can help them to compliment each other. Towards the end of the gallery, we were guided outdoors to see the glass structures presented with neatly trimmed plants and flowers. Purple glass structures were placed thoughtfully around purple flowers, and taller red plants were surrounded with tall and slim red glass structures.