Dale Chihuly is the Willy Wonka of glass art. His Seattle hot-shop teams produce crop after crop of wondrous and bizarre crystalline beings. After losing an eye in a car accident in 1976, Chihuly focused entirely on directing his glassblowers. He co-founded the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, and actively recruits talent from the alumni. He is rumored to employ something like 150 Chihuligans, and now their baroque blooms have sprouted throughout the Nashville art scene. Chihuly at the Frist showcases his sprawling museum pieces, such as the lush "Mille Fiori" (a thousand flowers), which seem so alive that the flowers look as if they might begin to converse amongst themselves. Hundreds of spiraling nodes make up the luminous flesh of the "Sea Blue and Green Tower." It greets the viewer like royalty, and you may find yourself compelled to bow.
The glass organisms have spawned in the gardens of Cheekwood as well. They spike up from the ground like curious visitors mimicking the surrounding bamboo, yet bursting with alien color. The more elaborate pieces are actually different each time they're assembled — for instance, the "Saffron Tower," with its neon fractal strands carefully fixed together by the patient hands of Chihuly's installers and electricians. Every Thursday and Friday evening, the strange menagerie inhabiting the grounds will be dramatically lit for Chihuly Nights, an experience of light and color that achieves maximum brilliance in the contrast of black night. (Cheekwood will remain open on Thursday and Friday nights till 10 p.m. May 27 through August, and till 9 p.m. in September and October.) Rounding out this comprehensive series of concurrent exhibits is the Nashville Symphony's performance of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, accompanied by six 14-foot-high Chihuly works, unveiled as Bluebeard's bride crosses their thresholds leading ever deeper into the mad nobleman's monstrous castle. Originally scheduled for the Schermerhorn, the production has been relocated to TPAC's Andrew Jackson Hall due to flood damage at the symphony hall.
In a recent interview with the Scene, Chihuly discusses communal art, the power of light, and decorating a basement. (He also expressed his sympathy for Nashville in the wake of the flood: "All of us in Seattle are thinking of all of you in Nashville and are very sorry that you're where this happened. Hopefully everything will be getting better soon for the people in Nashville.")
What brought such a comprehensive show to Nashville?
I learned about the Gardens at Cheekwood, and the Frist has always been one of the great institutions in the country. ... And what a great opportunity it would be to have a show at both locations. The performance of Bluebeard we did about two years ago here in Seattle, and since has gone to a few venues, most recently Milwaukee. So it was a unique opportunity to have a garden show and a museum show along with my works at the symphony. I guess all of them kind of colliding wasn't something that was necessarily planned, but it was an incredible opportunity.
The process in the hot shop is really quite communal. Could you speak about the community that produces your work?
For the last 25 years, I've worked with many glassblowers who work on different aesthetics or different projects for me, and it's important for them to understand what I'm trying to achieve, but they also have a lot of input and suggestions that help me, and inform me toward different directions and aesthetics that I might want to look at. And also it's important for me to have that group help me execute what I want to see in my garden shows or in my museum shows. I obviously can't do it by myself. So the team is a very important part, and it obviously starts with the glassblowers. The installers are also critical because we build everything in my warehouse so everyone understands what we're trying to create, the look and feel. But the teamwork, I think that's why so many people call us Team Chihuly — because it really is a team concept.
Are your drawings premeditated or do you discover them as you draw?
There was a time when the drawings were really a way for me to communicate what I wanted to see on the pad. Over time that's changed, and I really don't know what I'm drawing until I start drawing it.
The light in your work has an almost musical quality. Are you inspired by music?
I love music. I love the Beatles. I love Johnny Cash. I like Frank Sinatra. But light is one of the most important ingredients to glass. Once you illuminate it, whether it's ambient light or artificial light, it takes on a whole different character. So it is definitely one of the most important parts of my work, light. I've always been fascinated with light, even at a very young age when I started working with glass.
What makes a good glass artist?
Well you know we're very lucky here in Seattle with the Pilchuck School. ... As a result of that, many people come to the school and they wind up staying in Washington. We believe that we actually have more glassblowers and more hot shops in the state of Washington than anywhere in the world. So as such, we have a lot of incredibly talented glass artists and craftsmen that work in the medium.
Does that work take a lot of stamina?
It depends on what series we're working on, but if it doesn't take stamina, it takes a lot of patience.
Did you always know you were an artist?
No, I didn't always know. I wasn't a very good student, and maybe a bit of a hooligan. It wasn't till my brother passed away in a naval crash and my father passed away a year later, it wasn't till that time, when I decorated my mother's basement — which I thought I did a pretty good job at. Then I thought about being an artist, interior designer or an architect, and with encouragement from my mom I decided to go to college.
How did you decorate the basement?
(Laughter) Very inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. I think I did a pretty good job, but you know that was me thinking that.
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For his critics who feel Chihuly is overrated, there you have it. He's a decorator. And he's decorated his way to the forefront of the glass medium. These detractors argue that Chihuly's success is due in part to the vast ignorance of most other critics. They propose that we must be in the land of the blind if the one-eyed-man is king. It's interesting that the recent surge of Chihuly criticism coincides with the blockbuster success of James Cameron's Avatar — how many Chihuly haters sat there gawking, carried away by Cameron's glow-in-the-dark safari, yet would never acknowledge that Chihuly's been directing that show for decades? The fantastic is most convenient in the context of a story, but it might rub us a little weirder when it's breathing light in a dark room, just staring back at you with a hundred eyes all, wandering without moving.
Chihuly will give a free lecture at noon Friday, May 21, at TPAC's Jackson Hall. Since the lecture has been relocated, more seats have become available; 350 tickets will be given out first-come, first-serve at 11:45 a.m.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com.
