{"id":19372,"date":"2014-09-25T00:01:39","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T07:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=19372"},"modified":"2014-09-25T00:01:39","modified_gmt":"2014-09-25T07:01:39","slug":"dale-chihulys-glass-fine-art-kitsch-or-both","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/dale-chihulys-glass-fine-art-kitsch-or-both\/","title":{"rendered":"Dale Chihuly’s Glass: Fine Art? Kitsch? Or Both?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"dale<\/a>
Dale Chihuly — his enchanting singing sunflower glass scuptures at the entrance to the museum. Yes, these flowers\u00a0 actually sing. Listen here<\/a>. Photo by BF Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I can\u2019t make up my mind about Dale Chihuly. He\u2019s a glassblower, which makes him a craftsman. But is he also an artist? He’s prolific and his work is popular; does that mean he\u2019s pandering to a mass audience? Or does his mind-bogglingly ambitious glass stuff come from the heart? Is his work fine art\u2014or shameless kitsch? Is it guilty of sentimentality?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to go with all of the above.<\/p>\n

On a beautiful summer\u2019s day a few weeks ago, Jon and I strolled through the Chihuly Garden and Glass<\/a> museum at the Seattle Center, just the two of us.<\/p>\n

Our Seattle hosts for the week had told us that we might\u2014or might not\u2014want to take in the<\/p>\n

\"Glass<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Red<\/a>
Glass vessels from Chihuly’s early Basket series. Inspired by the slumped forms of Native American baskets that he saw in the Northwest, Chihuly set aside glasswork’s traditionally symetric forms. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chihuly exhibition. We could do as we pleased, they said, but they weren\u2019t coming with us. They\u2019d seen it once, and once was enough.<\/p>\n

We went. We saw. We took pictures. And as we strolled amongst Chihuly\u2019s often overwrought efforts, I wondered whether a little self-editing might have served him well.<\/p>\n

Writers, artists, musicians\u2014we all face the same challenge every day, with every brush stroke and with every line of prose: How do you know whether that nifty line you just wrote is searingly<\/p>\n

\"Dale
Chihuly’s early 1970s “Glass Forest” at Chihuly Garden and Glass museum in Seattle. I’m liking Chihuly’s earlier work — his Baskets, above, and this work created by dropping molten glass from on high. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

poignant\u2014or just plain corny? It requires a healthy resevoir of self-confidence\u2014ego?\u2014to go ahead and write\/paint\/compose what\u2019s really on your mind.<\/p>\n

People who write about religion are particularly vulnerable the poignant-corny divide. How do you write about people\u2019s deepest yearnings without waxing mushy and sentimental?<\/p>\n

That very challenge made the writing of Wrestling with God<\/em><\/a> take a lot longer than it would have if I\u2019d been writing about drought-tolerant ground covers for the back yard, say, or what to wear to<\/p>\n

\"A
A museum-goer photographs the museum’s Persian Ceiling. Chihuly created his first Persian Ceiling in the early 1990s. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

meet your son\u2019s in-laws-to-be. (I settled on dead pine needles for the yard, and polka dots for the in-laws.) As I wrote, I had to keep asking myself, will my readers find that paragraph off-putting? Or evocative?<\/p>\n

And so, as a writer of stuff that teeters on the edge of cheesy, I\u2019m going to cut artist Chihuly some slack here. Yeah, some of the concoctions he\u2019s put in this garden in downtown Seattle tend<\/p>\n

\"Glass<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Glass<\/a>
Several glass chandeliers hang from a ceiling of Chihuly Garden and Glass. Just a little overblown? Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

toward the overblown, literally and figuratively. Yeah, some of it is kitschy. But you\u2019ve got to admire a guy who\u2019s got the guts to put his heart out there for everybody in this, his home state, to see.<\/p>\n

And so, my advice to anyone about to visit Seattle: see this outrageous indoor-outdoor collection of Chihuly\u2019s work \u2013 if only to find out what a person can do with a blowpipe, some molten glass, and a shot of ego.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like “The Ghost of 300 Million Drought-Killed Trees Hovers Over a Lake in Texas”<\/a> and “Sue Johnson’s Lamps and Shades — Works of Art in Berkeley.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a>
Chartreuse and cerise vessels in Chihuly\u2019s \u201cMacchia Forest.\u201d Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Detail<\/a>
Detail from “Macchia Forest.” Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The Dale Chihuly Glasshouse and Glasshouse Sculpture: Over-the-top yellow and orange petunia shapes float overhead in a glass structure designed by Chihuly, fulfilling a lifelong dream.\u00a0 Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A<\/a>
The Chihuly garden features huge glass sculptures like this one set in contrasting or complementing vegetation. A technical tour-de-force. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A<\/a>
Dale Chihuly lost an eye in an auto accident in 1976. He dislocated his shoulder in a bodysurfiing accident in 1979 and was no longer able to blow glass himself. Since then he has hired others to do the hands-on work.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Dale<\/a>I can\u2019t make up my mind about Dale Chihuly. He\u2019s a glassblower, which makes him a craftsman. But is he also an artist? He’s prolific and his work is popular; does that mean he\u2019s pandering to a mass audience? Is his work fine art\u2014or shameless kitsch? Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,50],"tags":[653,1314,34,1315,1316,1317,488,197,53,69],"class_list":["post-19372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","category-on-writing-reading","tag-arts-and-crafts","tag-chihuly","tag-dont-miss","tag-kitsch","tag-seattle","tag-sentimentality","tag-the-writing-life","tag-the-writing-room-2","tag-wrestling-with-god","tag-writing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}