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>>Female Presenter: Good afternoon and welcome. It's an honor and a privilege for me today
to introduce one of the world's greatest contemporary artists and Seattle native son, Dale Chihuly.
Dale has popularized and revolutionized the Studio Glass Movement, bringing this new American
art to international fame.
His work is included in more than 200 major museum collections, which has to be pretty
close to setting the record for number of installations for a living artist as he's
exhibited in numerous prestigious museums and galleries all over the world, such as
the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and other exhibitions, including Chihuly in the
Light of Jerusalem, which broke a record for a million visitors.
He's also well-known for his garden installations. He studied here at University of Washington,
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Rhode Island School of Design. And he's been the
recipient of many awards, including eleven honorary doctorates and two fellowships for
the National Endowment of the Arts.
Dale and his team, working in a boathouse by the water here in Seattle, continue to
push the limits of glassblowing craftsmanship and glass art. And I have to say, it was seven
years ago I was lucky enough to get to visit the boathouse here in Seattle. And I was there
with my mother. And as we left, I think we drove about five blocks without saying anything.
And then, my mother stopped and said, "That is the closest experience anyone will ever
have to being at Giverny with Monet when he was painting the water lilies." [laughs] She
said it was just amazing to be with an artist of that caliber and quality and inspiration
while he's doing some of the best work of his career.
And the most amazing part of all of this is that Dale is opening his own garden here in
Seattle next month. And he's gonna give us an overview of that exhibit. It's Chihuly
Garden and Glass. And after that, we'll also be joined by his wife, Leslie Chihuly, and
Michelle Bufano for some questions. And with that, Dale Chihuly.
[applause]
>>Dale Chihuly: Thank you. Leslie and I are happy to be here and we're going to give you
a little sneak preview of Chihuly Garden and Glass. I'm gonna start with a seven-minute
video that will give you a history of my work. So, if we could queue that up.
[pause]
[plays video]
>>Dale Chihuly: I've often been asked what would I like to do that I haven't done. And
the first thing that comes to mind is that I'd like to build a conservatory or a glass
house and to design everything that goes inside it.
[upbeat music with drum and guitar]
I think ideas come a great deal from being alone. And even though I work with a great
team of people all day long, I happen to be an early riser. So, I'm often up at four,
five in the morning and have several hours to be on my own and think about things. There's
just all sorts of possibilities with glass.
I can't think of too many materials that haven't been exploited except for glass. One night
I melted some stained glass 'cause I had this little kiln 'cause I was fusing the glass
together. I put in a piece of iron pipe that I probably bought at the hardware store, and
blew a bubble. I had never seen glass blowing before.
Like there was a picture on the wall. I remember the picture clearly of a glassblower with
his cheeks all puffed out, like he was blowing a trumpet. So, from that point on, I wanted
to be a glassblower.
[drum beats]
In 1971, myself and some friends started Pilchuck Glass School. Pilchuck Glass School really
is what established Seattle as the preeminent glass center of the world--not just Seattle.
This is spread out into much of the Northwest. And every summer, we went back to Pilchuck,
which was an experimental glass workshop.
It was kind of a school, but more than, I would say more than anything, it was a place
where we developed ideas and experimented, back when we didn't really care about sales
or anything like that. So, nothing held us back from doing a lot of experimentation.
The whole idea of making art, as far as I'm concerned, it comes from just doing it over
and over and over.
We just have to be making a lot of mistakes. And finally, you've just done so many thousands
of pieces that it becomes sort of natural but you gotta go through five or ten years
of making mistakes all the time before you can develop that.
[hissing]
Don't worry about the form quite so much. Worry about the speed and worry about the
ease of the operation. Once you get all of that going, then everything, the form comes.
You got it down now. Let's get it down.
Once we get it down, let's keep it there and roll it. Nice. Over and over and over and
over. And then those forms will get better and better and better. I've been working with
glass now for 40 years. And, of course, the work started small. And it got larger and
larger. And then, at a certain point, the pieces were just big enough.
They became hard to handle if they were any bigger. And around that same time, I started
architectural installations. I have a degree in interior design and architecture. And so,
that was very comfortable working in the spaces. Even my smaller objects often had--I think
of them as architectural because they'll have one part inside another.
It was a very smooth transition to--. The installation started small. And then, as we
learned how to put things together, we quit making the parts big and we went back to making
the parts small. And so, it's massing all that color together. When you look at the
sun, and there's a thousand or more parts in it, there's that much yellow and the sun
is coming through it.
No artificial light is going through it. It just, it's just a massive amount of yellow
color and it's in this big, simple form. It just has a lot of power when you see it in
that way. So, it was a natural thing for me to go from the smaller works to the larger
works.
[jazzy music]
I couldn't do one-tenth of what I'm doing if I didn't have a big team. So, the complexity
of the big shows takes a great deal of people. And I've been very fortunate to, over the
years, build that team. Maybe I got a little bit of that organizational ability from my
dad, the butcher that was a union organizer. I don't know what. But I got very fortunate
in being able to work with great people.
[Spanish music]
I woke up one morning and said that I wanted to hang chandeliers over the canals of Venice.
And then, from that came the concept of working in different countries--making chandeliers
and taking them to Venice. The first country was Finland. The second was Ireland. The third
was Mexico.
[Spanish music]
It gave me an opportunity to build the chandeliers or make installations. And then, right outside,
there were woods or rivers to work in.
[splash]
And I always worked outside to some degree, but since 1995, it's become a more important
part of my work.
[splash]
Three. Three.
[splash]
You take that idea, make the decision to go with it and go down that road and see what
happens. And sometimes, it doesn't work. Most of the time, I've been fortunate that a lot
of the projects have worked or ideas have worked.
[Spanish music]
>>Jeffrey Wright: My family and I have been admirers of Dale and his work for many years.
And his art has been symbolizing to visitors--the creativity and the inspiration that lives
and breathes in our city. Dale has designed something truly beautiful and inspiring for
our community and the world. And personally, I can't wait to see the finished product.
[classical music]
>>Dale Chihuly: So, thanks again for coming. See you here next spring.
[applause]
[end video]
>>Dale Chihuly: I guess it's springtime. We're gonna open in 29 days, I think it is. May
21st. Right next to the Space Needle is about 100 feet over here and it's gonna be this
long building that's called the Exhibition Hall. And that will have nine rooms inside
the hall. This is the glass house. This is the garden.
[pause]
I'll go through a couple of the rooms with you. This is an installation I did in 1971
for a museum in Switzerland. And it's one of the first large-scale exhibition that's
about 30 feet across. And I've always loved this piece, so I decided to do it over for
the project.
The next slide is the Northwest Indian room, which is a take-off from a room that I have
in my studio in the boathouse in Seattle, showing Pendleton Blankets, Northwest Coast
Indian baskets, Edward Curtis prints on the wall that you can't see, and some of my glass
work that's influenced by the Indian baskets.
[pause]
The Glasshouse, by the way, we started this project last August. So, it's just gonna be--.
It'll take nine months from start to finish on the project. And the Glasshouse is just
about finished. You can see part of the piece that's gonna be inside there.
It's the piece will be a hundred feet long and 25 feet high inside the Glasshouse. And
then, you come out of the Glasshouse. We went by the Temple of the Sun. Over here is an
installation of blue pieces.
[pause]
Now, we're gonna go to the Collection Café where there's 28 different collections shown
in the Café. There'll be 23 tables, each table having a sheet of glass on top. And
you look down through it into a collection.
[pause]
Now, I'm gonna bring up my lovely wife, Leslie, to talk to you about the partnering we're
doing with other institutions around the project.
[applause]
>>Leslie Chihuly: Got reverb? It is all OK? I hear a little something there. It'll settle
down. I just wanna thank Google for inviting us here today. And I wanna thank you for the
extraordinary work that you're doing in featuring and championing artists and creative thinkers
by having talks like this.
I know Dale did one before and we're just very honored to be invited back. So, thank
you all for having us on the campus today. I'm Leslie Chihuly. I'm president of Chihuly
Studio and Portland Press. I'm also the Board Chair of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. And
like many of you, Dale and I are very proud of the city we live in.
We wanna make a difference and we think that this is really one of the great cities on
the planet. It's a very special place in that it's big enough to have a rich and diverse
cultural scene, and small enough where people feel they can make a difference. We're starters
and builders. Many of us in Seattle are newcomers drawn by spectacular nature and beauty and
kept here by work, careers, families, and the opportunity to participate in meaningful
ways in the life of the city.
With vision, talent, capital combined with philanthropy and volunteerism, we have created
a community that attracts some of the best and the brightest in the arts and technology,
medicine, business, and entrepreneurism. We're celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the World's
Fair, where the builders and thinkers of that time pointed to a bright future, full of possibility,
innovation, exploration, and achievement.
In the last 50 years, Seattle has built the cultural organizations we enjoy today. Imagine
Seattle and Tacoma without McCaw Hall, Benaroya Hall, the restored Paramount, the expanded
Seattle Art Museum and the sculpture park, the Tacoma Art Museum, Museum of Glass, the
Northwest African American Museum, the Intiman, the Rep, the ACT--so many other museums, galleries,
and diverse organizations of all sizes doing film, dance, music, and theater.
But another important anniversary is happening right now, which you may not know of, which
is called the 50th Anniversary of the Studio Glass Movement in this country. A two thousand
year old technology was about to be turned upside-down and inside-out by a small group
of artists who began to experiment with the natural qualities of hot glass.
They began to push the material beyond anything that had ever been seen or done historically.
Testing and failing, being willing to try over and over again to achieve new scale,
to use old techniques in new ways, gave birth to a new movement and a new period in art
history. We also celebrated the 40th Anniversary of Pilchuck Glass School this past year.
It was co-founded by Dale. And the school was built out of the dreams of a few artists
combined with the generosity of philanthropists Annie and John Hauberg, who decided to contribute
lands and funds to some young people who had ideas, energy, and passion to create. We're
so proud that that school is going to be one of the founding partners of Chihuly Garden
and Glass.
What you will see when you visit Chihuly Garden and Glass is the work of a lifetime by a Northwest
artist. It encompasses the education, the mentoring, the influences, inspiration, travels
and experience of a lifetime spent looking at the world through an artist's sensibility.
When the Wright family, owners of the Space Needle, invited Dale as an artist to look
at the old Fun Forest site, they invited me and our organization, Chihuly Studio, to participate
in the process.
We needed to make a case to the community about how private use of public land would
be a benefit to the community as a whole. Person by person, group by group, at City
Hall, in private and public gathering places, we began to speak to the importance of this
project for kids, for fellow artists, for tourists, for families, for the city, and
for the Seattle Center as a place where everyone could come and see what is possible when you
have a commitment to making the world a more beautiful and aesthetic place.
It says something about our city that we can recognize how one person's success as an artist
means that others can have that same opportunity to imagine new worlds and to see them take
shape in a lifetime. We need to continuously support our arts.
We hope this project will provide more visibility and success, not only to our founding non-profit
partners, which include Pratt Fine Arts Center, Pilchuck Glass School, ArtsFund an the Seattle
Public Schools, but to all of the arts organizations in the community who exist to serve the educational,
civic, and cultural needs of our city.
We hope that it is a window into the very creative life of our city and that it is a
gathering place where more discussion and more advocacy for what we value can happen.
Most of our arts organizations don't have the endowments of older institutions around
the rest of the country. So, our next push will be to endow the cultural institutions
we value so that we can sustain them for the next generations.
Dale and I believe that exposure to the arts should be a part of everyone's educational
experience, which is why we're excited about Chihuly Garden and Glass and partnership that
it will have with the Seattle Public Schools. A science curriculum is being developed for
all eighth graders in the Seattle area.
We believe that the understanding of creativity within one's self and seeing it in others
helps to build community and translates into more fulfilling and productive lives. So,
we need to continue to make the case for arts in our community. We don't take it for granted.
And we remember that is it our arts that give the city its pulse.
With the help and thinking of the many creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial members of
our community, many of whom are in this room today and in the virtual room we're experiencing,
I imagine that we can be the leaders for the rest of the world in terms of how to use our
existing public and private resources wisely and to leverage those resources to a sustainable
future.
We hope Chihuly Garden and Glass will be a source of joy and inspiration for everyone
in our city and that people who come to visit from other cities and other countries around
the world will see that Seattle is a place that supports its artists, its businesses,
and can dream big dreams and make them happen.
We invite everyone to go out and participate in all kinds of arts experiences in the community--music,
screenings of theater, film, dance, and poetry. And we see that the beauty of creativity is
that it enjoys many languages. And the more people are exposed, the more they can make
connections and lead creative lives in all fields of endeavor.
So, thank you so much for having us. I wanna also introduce you today to Michelle Bufano,
who's the executive director of Chihuly Garden and Glass. And she'll join us for the Q and
A.
[pause]
[applause]
>>Female Presenter: I wanna thank all of you for taking time out of your busy schedule.
And I know just how busy it must be with just 23 to 29 days left here in the home stretch.
But to kick off, I wanted to talk a little bit about the new project, Chihuly Garden
and Glass.
And it came up a bit in the video, but I'd love to hear more about the inspiration behind
it, and also some of the challenges in Michelle's day-to-day world. So, Dale, maybe you can
tell us a little bit more about what inspired you around the project.
>>Dale Chihuly: Well, what inspired me was to put together what I thought of was the
most important projects in my career. So, it starts with 1971 and goes forward and has
one room of chandeliers from Venice. And I just tried to make it as beautiful as I could.
>>Female Presenter: And Michelle, you, as the Executive Director of Chihuly Garden and
Glass, have been with this project every step of the way. So, tell us a little bit about
your day-to-day role and some of what you really look forward to once the museum opens.
>>Michelle Bufano: Well, the main part of what I've been doing is really focusing on
how each visitor will experience the exhibition. So, from the second they get on our website,
which is up and running, to buying their tickets, coming in the door, and how they experience
and interact with the art in all the different levels--parts of the exhibitions. So, it's
been really exciting to watch the art being installed and watch how it changes every day
and being able to react to that.
>>Female Presenter: And I think one of the really interesting things about the exhibition
is that it brings together all these different pieces of your career as well as an urban
landscape, as well as sustainable planning. And I know that one of the things that's really
important to you is how your work is juxtaposed against nature.
Has it been different working in an urban space? I mean, there's obviously some elements
of nature there, but I'm wondering what some of the interesting challenges and opportunities
have been.
>>Dale Chihuly: It's been very different. To start with, it was pavement six months
ago. And Richard, our landscape designer, tried to work with me with the installations
that would be there and then the landscaping that would go with it, but it's, I'm not used
to working with landscape architects.
So, it was a challenge. As you can see today, it's, some of the areas look pretty good,
but it's not gonna look as good as it could for another year or so.
>>Female Presenter: I think that's one of the great things about gardens, is that over
time, they grow and they change. And so-- [laughs]
>>Leslie Chihuly: Yeah.
>>Female Presenter: I was lucky enough to visit the site this morning and get to see
its progress. And it's already just spectacularly beautiful. So, it would be really exciting
to see how it comes out. One of the other interesting pieces that's different than other
exhibits you've done is the length of this exhibit.
You have the space for 30 years. And I'm wondering if that's changed at all your thoughts on
how to lay it out and how to design the exhibit because, rather than just being there for
one season, it's there for a lot longer.
>>Dale Chihuly: Yeah. It really changed everything. We're used to having a show up for a month
or maybe three or four months. But when it's gonna be up for 30 years, you really have
to make sure that it works.
And so, we made a lot of the glass specially for that. Like the piece that's up on the
screen now, we've done other works that have, made out of these what I call Persian parts,
but all of these are like, twice as thick as they would normally be just to make sure
that there's no way that anything could crack.
>>Female Presenter: And it's right there. You can see it in the picture in the back
of this image if you can see the screen. It's right there at the Space Needle, which is
celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year. Were there parts of the exhibit that were
inspired by the Space Needle itself?
[pause]
>>Dale Chihuly: Probably. [laughs] Yeah.
>>Female Presenter: I noticed there were a lot of towers.
>>Dale Chihuly: I love that.
>>Female Presenter: Yeah.
>>Dale Chihuly: You know, there are these iconic towers in restaurants all over the
world. And except for maybe the Eiffel Tower, this is the tower that's most known. I'm not
quite sure why, but it, everybody loves the Space Needle.
There was a time, 30 years ago, when people wanted to take it down. It was never meant
to be up. It was only supposed to be for the World's Fair. It cost three million dollars
to build in 1962. And last year, it cost four million dollars to paint it.
[pause]
[laughter]
>>Female Presenter: I think that happens a lot with the World's Fair exhibits, the same
is true for the Eiffel Tower. The Golden Gate Bridge, which I think was also built for one
of the World's Fairs, but obviously, that was meant to be more permanent. But tell us
a little bit about your connection to Seattle. It's, you're almost synonymous with it.
I think each of you has your own special connection. And I'd like to hear a little bit about, I
think this exhibit is really a celebration of Seattle, itself. And so, maybe you can
talk a little bit about your relationship with the city.
[pause]
>>Dale Chihuly: Well, I went to college in Tacoma for the first year. I didn't wanna
go to school. I was not a very good student. My mother talked me into going to school.
And that winter, I decorated her basement and thought I could be a great interior designer.
So, I transferred to the University of Washington in Seattle.
And I got a degree in Interior Design and Architecture. And it was during that time
that I was beginning to work with glass and weaving and tapestries. And one night, I melted
some glass and blew a bubble. And from that point on, I wanted to be a glassblower. And
I went to Alaska and became a commercial fisherman to save money to go to graduate school at
the University of Wisconsin.
And I went to Venice, Italy after that. And I then went to the Rhode Island School of
Design to start a glass department there, but at the same time, we started the Pilchuck
Glass School. So, every summer, I would come back to Seattle to Pilchuck and every winter,
I would stay in Rhode Island.
And I did that for ten years. And when my sales of my glass matched my income as a professor,
which was 18 thousand dollars a year in 1980, I quit teaching and came back to Seattle and
have been here ever since.
>>Female Presenter: And Leslie, I know you've been working with numerous partners, some
of whom are, most of them are based here in Seattle. Maybe you can talk a little bit about
your connection to the city.
>>Leslie Chihuly: Sure. Well, I moved here in '85 and went to graduate school at U Dub
in Russian Studies. And at that time, you couldn't find a restaurant that was open past
nine. We didn't have--. I mentioned a lot of the halls and the things that have happened
really that have been built since I moved here.
And I think what I saw was a city with a future, the fact I didn't even think it really was
a city. I thought it was a town. And I think it's become a city in this period of time.
And so, it's a really exuberant and hopeful place in terms of being able to build and
do new things. We're not burdened with a lot of the traditions and history of older cities.
And so, it's a city where everything is possible. What's exciting to me about this project in
the context of Seattle is not only the aesthetics and the fact that we're celebrating a local
artist, as it were, but that we're going to be a convening place for all of the arts and
for certainly the community partners. And we hope that list will grow over time.
And I'm working with Michelle and many of us are working hard to think about how the
space will be used over time to really bring more attention to the incredible arts that
we enjoy in the city.
>>Female Presenter: And Michelle, you're now the Executive Director of this exhibit that
really celebrates the city itself, some of its wonderful landmarks, like the Space Needle.
Tell us a little bit about your experience here in Seattle.
>>Michelle Bufano: Well, just to build on what Leslie said about building our partnerships
with this city, and we're also building partnerships on the campus--on the Seattle Center campus.
And it's really exciting right now because of the 50th. There's so much going on. King
Tut is opening in a month as well.
We have the symphony, the ballet. But it's really becoming a focal point, the whole campus.
And this project is spearheading a program called "Center Nights," where people will,
everyone who's on campus will develop programming and we'll open up our doors to great programming,
at least once a quarter for people to come.
So, I see it as really an opportunity to build excitement and to bring people to one center
place for the arts. So, that's been an exciting part of it. Personally, I've been involved
with Dale's work since I worked at the Tacoma Art Museum and then opened the Museum of Glass.
So, I've been a big fan of glass and most recently came for Pratt Fine Arts Center,
which is one of the community partners for this project.
>>Female Presenter: One of the interesting things of the museum is there's a café. And
it's called Collections Café. And I think that one of the things that really surprised
me when I got to visit the boathouse was all the different collections that you have, Dale--everything
from shaving brushes to accordions to Navajo blankets to something I didn't even realize
existed, but there were string dispensers, which looked like little faces on the wall
with pieces of string coming out of their mouths because before there were tape dispensers,
there were string dispensers.
And I know that collecting and just collecting lots of different objects and looking at all
the differences is a big part of your process as an artist. So, tell us what some of the
collections that you're more proud of. Maybe you want to give us a little bit of background
of the café and what people can see there.
>>Dale Chihuly: Well, I mean, I started when I was a kid. But I think a lot of kids collect
things--marbles or toy soldiers or beach glass. But I just kept collecting. Usually, you stop
at a certain age. And I've always collected. Like, I have 500 accordions and 800 Pendleton
blankets, 400 Northwest Coast Indian baskets.
And I was down at the Pacific Galleries this weekend looking around. I ended up buying
four original posters of the World's Fair from 1962. And Leslie asks me sometimes, "What
makes you collect?" I don't know.
I can't explain what it is exactly that makes me--. Some people like to collect. Other people,
it's a bother. And the Collection Café was, we were gonna have a café in the project
no matter what. And it was just the perfect opportunity to get rid of some of those collections.
[laughter]
>>Female Presenter: So, I was there this morning and you'll be able to see 28 of Dale's collections
up close, including, actually, inside the tables. So, each table will have its own collection
of some of the things that Dale has collected over the years, everything from miniature
dogs to bottle openers. There's antique radios. There's a lot of really interesting artifacts
that come with the café part of the museum.
>>Dale Chihuly: And that's been a lot of fun. We did a little--. I'll tell you what. We'll
give everybody a little booklet. But you don't get them today, but I did a little catalog
from about the café, showing each collection. And I printed 20 thousand of them to be given
away at the café. And Leslie, no. Yeah. Leslie just told me today--
>>Leslie Chihuly: They're in. They're in. Big boxes full. All right.
>>Dale Chihuly: they came in. It costs 51 cents each to print.
[Female Presenter laughs]
>>Female Presenter: And I've heard they've been a hot commodity. There's been two proof
books today that people keep wanting to take with them. So, it'll be interesting to see
them, the final product. Your work really happens in series. And you have some series
for which you're very well-known--the Macchia, the Venetians, the Sea Forms. Do you have
one series that you really love revisiting, or one that you like the best?
>>Dale Chihuly: Oh. I've been asked that question before and I don't really have a good answer.
It changes, you know? Right now, I've been thinking about a series that I started a few
years ago called "The Jerusalem Cylinders." And in the next couple of weeks, we're gonna
start working on those again.
So, I'm thinking about Jerusalem Cylinders. Right now, they're a favorite. But sometimes,
it's the baskets. Sometimes, it's the Sea Forms. It really does change because they
were all--. I thought about all of them before I ever developed them into a series. I didn't
just say, "OK. I'm gonna make baskets and then make, work for two years on baskets."
I waited until I really felt that I had something concrete before I pursued it. So, it's hard
to say. I wish I could answer that better for you.
>>Female Presenter: And in the exhibit hall, there's eight rooms. And each of them map
to one of the series. And they have different themes. One of the interesting pieces about
the exhibit is that it's in one of Seattle's highest traffic areas.
>>Dale Chihuly: Thank you.
>>Female Presenter: Like, lots of people go to the Space Needle. You've been really putting
the Garden and Glass together with the public watching. Have there been particular pieces
in exhibits that have been really hard to install? Are there any good stories of assembly
so far?
>>Michelle Bufano: I don't know if we're allowed to say those stories.
[laughter]
No. I think you're--
>>Dale Chihuly: I'll tell you.
>>Michelle Bufano: looking at--
>>Female Presenter: Yeah.
>>Michelle Bufano: one of the most challenging right there.
>>Leslie Chihuly: That armature for the Glass House was probably one of the most high-level
engineering feats of all time.
>>Dale Chihuly: That makes me think of that story I told you this at lunchtime about difficult
situations, in that we blew glass in a little village in France--Vion. And we made, I had
the whole team over there.
We had about 30 people working hand in hand with the French glassblowers. And we made
enough glass to fill two containers, which we sent back to Seattle. Only one of the containers
arrived. The other went over the side of the ship. And comes to find out that if you wanna
ship a container, if you want your container to be below deck, you have to pay an extra
tariff.
[laughter]
And somewhere, that container has got a lot of bubble wrap in it. So, I'll bet it's close
to the surface somewhere.
[laughter]
>>Female Presenter: We talked that those containers often float. So, that's the hazard of doing
work abroad. But that said, I do think your time at University of Wisconsin and Venice,
more specifically abroad, had really influenced your work. Can you give us a little bit of
insight into how each of those locations has shaped your work and your vision today?
>>Dale Chihuly: Well, let's see. At the University of Wisconsin, I was coming with a degree in
Interior Design and Architecture. I really hadn't made any art to say. And so when I
got there, I was gonna be in a graduate fine arts program. And I was really lucky to meet
a couple of guys that were far more talented than I was.
And I ended up, one of them was a roommate. And during that year, I really learned a great
deal about art, not from my faculty, but from these guys I was living with. And that set
me off in the right direction. And when I went to the--. What did you ask? The Rhode
Island School of Design?
>>Female Presenter: That or Venice. Either one or both.
>>Dale Chihuly: Both.
>>Female Presenter: Yeah.
>>Dale Chihuly: Well, either one. I'll take Venice. [laughter] Venice, I arrived in Venice.
I had a Fulbright, which pays, I think it paid 450 dollars a month at that time. And
I arrived in Venice feeling a little depressed from graduating. And I finally made my way
out to the Venini Glass Works, one of the most famous glass works.
And I had a letter from them saying that I could observe there for three weeks. And I
met the owner and he had just gotten a possibility of doing a commission--a large commission--in
a town square of Ferrara. And they didn't have any experience or anybody there that
could really design something like that.
And I talked him into letting me design it. And I used glass. I used plastic. I used neon.
And so, I got set up. I was given my own studio up on top of the factory. And there, I mean,
I could have blown glass there if I wanted to, but they were so much better than I was.
It was too embarrassing. But I got to watch all the time.
And that's really one of the best ways to learn about glassblowing and a lot of other
skills, crafts, is by watching. And I learned, 'cause back in the States, everybody had been
working by themselves. And glassblowing doesn't work very well by yourself. It really takes
a team of two or three. We work with a minimum of about eight people on the team at any one
time.
And up as many as 15 people on a team, working on the same piece of glass. So, what I learned
more than anything, what I learned from Venice was teamwork.
>>Female Presenter: And in addition, you're best known for glassblowing, but you also
paint and draw. And one of my favorite things about Dale, I don't know if you guys can see
his shoes, but he always has paint-smattered shoes. [laughs] So, tell us a little bit about
how drawing and painting influences your inspirations as an artist. And how is that part of your
process?
>>Dale Chihuly: Well, I never really drew that much. I mean, even though in undergraduate,
I had to make drawings of interiors and architecture. After that, I never drew that much, but I
lost the sight of my eye in 1976, which meant I had no peripheral vision and no depth perception.
And that made it difficult to work out there with a team because for obvious reasons.
And so, from that point on, I started having one of the really great glassblowers on the
team, a young man named William Morris. I had Billy head up the team and I would make
drawings to show him what I wanted to make. And so, that was back in the late '70s. And
I've been drawing and painting ever since. A lot of times it won't be necessarily about
what I'm gonna make. It'll just be, I just like to paint.
>>Female Presenter: I think one of the things that had really, in addition to the scale
of your work, that really sets your work apart is the thinness of the glass--how thin you're
able to blow it as well as the vibrancy of the color. And I imagine that some of those
things are advances that you've developed with your team. Are there other technological
advances that have come along in the past 40 years that have really changed glassblowing?
>>Dale Chihuly: Probably the thin glass, working that way, was definitely innovative, but that
allowed us to--. When it was thin like that, we could heat it up in the furnace and it
would begin to collapse, or go asymmetrical.
Glass, if you let it go on its own, it wants to be symmetrical. So, if you're gonna make
it like these pieces here, are perfectly round and without having that scalloped edge, until
the last reheat. Then, it's heated up and it's spun open. They're about two feet in
diameter--a little more. It's spun open and then it's spun harder.
And the tips, because it had been blown in what we call an optical mold, which is a ribbed
mold, we blew it in there at a certain point, which made the glass go thick and thin all
the way around. And the thick parts remain hotter. And so, they come out and you get
that scalloped effect.
And so, I suppose what I'm best known for is asymmetrical glass using heat, fire, centrifugal
force, gravity. Those are the tools. We use very few hand tools.
>>Female Presenter: And I think with that question, what your answer is really about
is about innovation. And so, one of the questions I'd like to ask all three of you is, are there
things that you've learned along the way through the partnerships, through developing the exhibit,
and also through your work, through the many schools--Pilchuck, Rhode Island School of
Design--are there lessons that you think could apply to tech and to other industries, things
you've learned along the way that you think are true about pushing a science or a medium
forward?
>>Dale Chihuly: Well, probably teamwork.
[laughter]
>>Leslie Chihuly: I'm just thinking about the new model that this Chihuly Garden and
Glass represents because it's really privately owned and operated by the Wright family.
And it's called Wright Art, LLC. And so, this is the first time that something like this
has been done in the city and yet, we're partnering with non-profit groups. We're not a non-profit.
We're not building a non-profit board. We're not fund-raising. So, the fact that it's been
in private investment by a leading family in the community is new.
And the fact that it's being done, in some ways, to feel like a museum, to feel like
a non-profit, and the kinds of programs and commitment that we have to community. So,
I think it's really a very innovative approach to the organization.
>>Michelle Bufano: That's great.
>>Dale Chihuly: You know, the most important of all is being creative, which is, would
be obviously critical to what you guys do. And obviously critical to what I do. And just
being as innovative as you possibly can. Get up early and have a lot of ideas.
[laughter]
>>Michelle Bufano: So, as I've been reading, though, about Dale's work, and preparing,
one thing is the way that you--you brought it up earlier, Marissa--about he continues,
you continue to go back to a series and push it a little bit further. And the end result
of that ends up being something completely different maybe than you started with ten
years ago or 20 years ago.
And I think that is one thing that we could all learn in our different disciplines that
we work in. And it's that pushing it, but also coming back to it, revisiting the idea
again in a different light.
>>Dale Chihuly: I wonder if, I touched on this a minute ago, but if I'm starting off
a new series, let's just say it happens to be these Persians. And I'll work and I'll
experiment and we'll make them over and over, try different things. Then, at a certain point,
I have a month or two worth of work.
And all through that process, I'm trying to decide whether or not this work should become
a series for me, whether or not it's worth investing the time and energy. On the other
hand, if I keep investing time and energy into something that's gonna be a loser, that's
a big mistake.
And I have to decide at what point I cut it loose, or at what point I decide that I'm
gonna exhibit it. Once I exhibit it, it gets locked in. And I would imagine that the same
thing applies to what you do to a certain degree.
>>Female Presenter: There's a lot of prototyping and iteration in what we do. And then also
figuring out when are we going to take something and really scale it.
>>Dale Chihuly: Yeah.
>>Female Presenter: It's the equivalent of it, probably the technological equivalent
of having a series and when are we going to just let an experiment go. So, I'm gonna ask
one more question, and then we'll go to the audience for a few audience questions, if
you guys have some.
And my question is about, I think that this piece that we're seeing here on the screen,
which is the Glass House and the new Garden and Glass House, is really innovative and
it really is pushing the bounds. And it is the centerpiece. It's a hundred feet long,
40 feet tall, 14 hundred pieces of glass. What was the inspiration here? You said you
always wanted to do it, but what was it inspired by?
>>Dale Chihuly: Well, I always wanted to do a glass house, which makes me think of a chapel
or a cathedral. And I just designed the Glass House along with what was gonna be inside.
And again, it was primarily to make something that people hadn't seen before with the most
gorgeous color that I could do with the right amount of work in the Glass House so that
it didn't get overpowered because I love the structure as well.
>>Leslie Chihuly: One of our own--. Well, you could talk about this, the armature itself.
The structure of that was built in our studio. And I think over all of the years of the projects
that Dale's worked on, that particular aspect has gotten more and more sophisticated--the
engineering that goes into having something that's a hundred feet long overhead, suspended
from glass is something that's really not been done.
>>Female Presenter: I think one of the things that Googlers can really relate to is, in
your work, there's a ton of engineering. There's a lot of math. There's a lot of geometry.
There's a lot of thinking through what will work. And so with that, I'd like to invite
some of the Googlers to ask questions. Do we have any questions from the audience?
>>Dale Chihuly: One thing is that--you're probably familiar with this--but if the chandelier
weighs, say, a thousand pounds--this one probably weighs 25 thousand pounds--but if it weighed
a thousand pounds, we're gonna put it in Google someplace. The engineers wanna rate it to
hold five thousand pounds.
So, it's a five to one ratio, which is, which can be a problem 'cause somebody wants a chandelier
in their house and it just won't support the, what's required from engineering. It would
support it, but not the way the engineers wanna support it.
>>Female Presenter: Well, I remember in some of your Persian ceilings, I remember reading--I
was surprised by that the glass actually has flex. So, over these long expanses of glass
that other pieces of glass sit on, you actually, you need a five foot piece. You actually need
five foot and a half an inch because it actually will bow, which I didn't realize the glass
actually had that much play and flexibility in it. So, do we have a question?
>>male #1: So, this is a beautiful exhibit. I have to know, what's next? What other exhibits
do you have in the pipeline?
[pause]
>>Dale Chihuly: Leslie, tell him what we're doing.
[laughter]
>>Leslie Chihuly: Before we open this Chihuly Garden and Glass, we've got a show at the
Dallas Arboretum coming up first week of May. It'll be up through the summer, just during
tornado season. So, we'll see how we fare on that. And then in the fall, we've got Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts.
Coming up another, less than a year after that is the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
And we're looking at some interesting projects in Shanghai and in Beijing in terms of museum
shows and interesting exhibition opportunities.
[pause]
>>Dale Chihuly: Yeah. Dallas will be the, I think it's the 12th Arboretum or Conservatory
show that I've done, starting about ten years ago. And that was a great deal to do because
of my interest in glass and glasshouses and greenhouses.
>>Female Presenter: You've talked a lot about mentorship and teamwork, both the way you
were mentored early on by getting to watch some of your fellow students and peers work.
There's a really happening, burgeoning art scene here in Seattle. How do you envision
Chihuly Garden and Glass and your studio interacting with that, with that group of artists?
>>Leslie Chihuly: One factoid that we've mentioned in the past, I don't know if you're aware,
but it's that we actually have more people working in glass in the Seattle area than
in anywhere else in the world, including Morano. So, this is the--. And we've also got an MFA
and a BA program in glass now, the UW.
We've got the Pilchuck Glass School, which I mentioned earlier. So, there's a constant
evolution of the educational aspects that are possible for people in this area at all
ages. We've got an at-risk glassblowing program that's integrated into the Tacoma Public Schools,
called the Hilltop Program. So, really at all ages, we're thinking about glass and education
around glass as an opportunity, sort of as a lift-off point for creative thinking, for
working with your hands, for thinking about ideas conceptually.
And who knows? You think about the great history of glass and what used to happen in Venice
is that if you escaped the island of Venice and you made it to England with the secrets,
you were knighted. But if you were caught leaving Venice, you were beheaded. So, Dale,
one of his great innovations in really generous gifts to the art community is that he really
opened up the community.
He opened up the secrets. He invited the great glass masters of Venice to come and work here.
And so now, there's this passing of the torch that goes back and forth between the people
who've worked in glass for a long time and those who are coming into it now.
>>Female Presenter: We have a few questions here at the microphone.
>>female #1: So, something in the lines along education. So, you mentioned that you started
out with glassblowing pretty little. How little were you? And how little will be a kid to
be old enough to do glassblowing? And do you have any advice for kids that are too little?
What can they do at home or to start having the creativity explored in them?
>>Dale Chihuly: Well, our son started blowing glass when he was about eight. Unfortunately,
he quit when he was about ten.
[laughter]
But there are a couple of other kids that blow glass at around eight or nine years old.
You can get quite good, actually. Something they can do at a younger age is to, it's what
I did when I was in college getting my degree. And I started putting those bits of glass
in tapestries. I needed to make it so that the glass wasn't sharp.
So, I got a little oven, about two feet across, that would go up to--. It was a ceramic oven.
It went up to about 25 hundred degrees. And so, I would put them in the oven and take
it up high enough to round the edges. And then, I started putting one piece attached
to another, which is called fusing. And then, I started working with making little three-dimensional
sculptures.
But you can have, I would imagine, you could have probably from about the age of five,
you could have kids start working with stained glass, or glass fusing. Glass fusing would
be easier, actually, than stained glass. You have to figure out at point can they cut the
glass. Probably learn at a pretty young age. Was that your question?
>>Female Presenter: We'll take one more question.
>>male #2: So, an exhibit like this probably takes a lot of planning for light. And how
did you do that for, how do you plan to have the lighting effect this exhibit when it's
not sunny in Seattle?
[laughter]
>>Dale Chihuly: I couldn't hear. Could you hear it?
>>Leslie Chihuly: He's talking about light and how did we plan it with the effect of
light, and--.
>>male #2: Yeah. Like, you need a lot of light for something like this to, with glass, right?
And--.
>>Michelle Bufano: I can tell you this. At different times of the day, you have a completely
different experience in the Glass House and the way that the light of the day reflects
on the glass that's in there.
What's so amazing about it is that it actually changes as there's sun or no light. It's just
amazing to look at the different qualities of the glass. And I think that's one of the
reasons people will continue to keep coming back is just to see that difference. But as
far as the planning goes, that was all Dale's vision. [laughs]
>>Dale Chihuly: You know, there are really only three or four materials that transmit
light of any scale. There are a few gems, like diamonds and things, but materials of
any scale there's only glass, plastic--. Actually, this is a good audience. See if I'm wrong.
[laughter]
You got glass, plastic, ice, and water. Those are--. Alabaster would be one maybe. Those
are about the only material that light can go through. And that's what makes glass so
incredibly mysterious. If you have a little bit of--.
If I put a piece of red glass on the wall down there, a hundred feet down the other
end, one inch square, and I lit it from behind with the sun or with a Par 36 light bulb,
you would easily see that one inch square. Any other material, you couldn't even see
it. There's something very magical about glass. Did anybody think of another material? See?
It's tough.
[laughter]
>>Female Presenter: Well, and actually going through the exhibit today, I think that it
actually merits a few visits. Like, I started noticing that at first, you notice all the
color and the shapes and the forms. And then, you start to realize how many different lights
there are here and there--the actual engineering behind the exhibit, and the armatures and
things like that.
And so, I definitely encourage all of you to go to Chihuly Garden and Glass when it
opens on May 23rd? May 21st. So, definitely encourage you to go visit, make multiple visits.
There's a lot there to see. It's like a combination of bringing together an amazing career and
a career that's still in progress that I'm sure we're gonna see even more great things
from in the future.
And it's been a huge honor to have all of you here today to talk about the project and
talk about your career and your accomplishments.
>>Dale Chihuly: It's our honor. Thank you so much.
>>Leslie Chihuly: Thank you.
>>Michelle Bufano: Thank you.
[applause]