DALE CHIHULY

Dale Chihuly

Dale Chihuly

History of Dale Chihuly

Dale is one of the leading artists who have worked in more than 200 museum collections worldwide. He was born on 20th September, 1941 in Tacoma, Washington. He completed his graduation from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. In 1959, after his brother's death in 1957 following his father's death in 1958 he got admission in College of the Puget Sound. He got transferred after one year to University of Washington at Seattle. In 1965 he received BA degree in interior design which introduced him to glass. He was awarded highest honors from American Institute of Interior Designs (Chihuly, 2011).

He earned Master of Science degree in sculpture from the very first of the glass programs in the country from University of Madison in 1967. He studied glass in Venice at Rhode Island School of Design and was awarded with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1968. He established the glass program and taught for more than ten years. He also received a Fulbright Fellowship and then went to work in Venini glass factory in Venice. In 1971, he founded a Pilchuck Glass School supported by John Hauberg and Anne Gould Hauberg. Also with the help of his international glass center, he advanced the study of glass as a fine art.

In 1976 he faced a car accident which blinded him from the left eye. His face was severely cut. In 1979 he encountered a bodysurfing accident which caused him dislocated shoulder (Chihuly, 2011).

Work of Dale Chihuly

In 1968 Chihuly became the first American glassblower to work in Venini Fabrica on the island of Murano. In 1970's Chihuly experimented team approach to glassblowing. He, along with his assistants and team produced architectural glass art with high quality. In 1975 he started Navajo Blanket Series where Navajo patterns were painted into one glass. He received the first National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist grants. After his accident he handed over the work of gaffer to William Morris. Chihuly developed Macchia series on a major scale with multi-colored forms. In 1977 he started Northwest Coast Basket Series stimulated from Northwest coast Indian baskets. In 1974 he developed a method to pick glass thread drawings.

In 1980's both Chihuly and Morris worked on sea form series where transparent sculptures of thin glass were supported by ribbed strands of color and also started basket and cylinder series. In 1986, he made a new Persian sequence which was highlighting more of the controlled color and room-sized installations with the collaboration of Martin Blank as gaffer. In 1988 he started work on Venetian chain with an Italian glassblower Lino Tagliapietra working as gaffer. In 1989 he started Ikebana series comprising of glass flower arrangements.

1990's showed Chihuly working intensively on large-scale architectural glass art installations. In 1991 he started working on Niijima Floats inspired from Japanese Island Niijima where six-foot spheres of complicated colors were made. Niijima Floats were one of the largest hand blown glass ...