A Glass Act: Chihuly exhibit featured at Las Vegas Art Museum

Kimberley McGee

Thursday, March 8, 2001 | 9:54 a.m.

On the eve of the Feb. 28 Seattle earthquake, master glassblower and painter Dale Chihuly was finishing a chicken dinner, shouting out orders to his assistant and discussing his glass artworks that surrounded him during a phone interview.

"I do about 1,000 pieces a year, and I'm talking about that's what makes it (out of the ovens)," he said. "A lot of them don't."

The 59-year-old Seattle artist is frank about the fragility of his art.

Breaks happen.

He has had many over the years, some good, some bad. He takes it all in stride, he said.

At 10:25 the next morning a 6.8 earthquake rocked his Seattle studio, named the Boathouse, and sent 10 of the top-heavy pieces from his "Venetians" series tumbling to the floor.

In less than 60 seconds the world-famous glass artist lost 40 pieces ranging from an estimated $10,000 to $40,000 each.

That's all right, as he said, "I make a lot of glass."

More than 350 pieces of Chihuly's glass art is on display at the Las Vegas Art Museum through April 30, including a handful of the surviving "Venetians" from the George R. Stroemple collection.

The 54-year-old Stroemple is a businessman with an eye for progressive art. With a catalog of more than 500 pieces, Stroemple is the largest Chihuly collector as well as one of the artist's closest friends.

The size of the collection as well as the close relationship between the collector and artist is rare, said Bruce Guenther, chief curator of modern and contemporary art of the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.

"The collection is amazing in that they are all together and George (Stroemple) was involved with (some of) their making," Guenther said.

The Stroemple Collection encompasses much of Chihuly's career, from the 1975 "Irish Cylinders" to the 1995 "Venetians" series.

"With the 'Venetians' series, Dale reinvented Venetian art and brought it into the 20th century," Guenther said. "That's why he is so amazing. He expands on (art)."

The 2,000-year-old Roman craft of glass making remained basically unchanged since its inception. Until the 1960s glass was mainly used as attractive vessels for perfumed oil, flowers and candies.

Chihuly's work has moved beyond the imagination of the ancient glass makers, Guenther said.

"Dale Chihuly is an international phenomenon," Guenther said. "He has inspired generations of artists who want to do the same thing."

Unbreakable skill

Chihuly is a man of firsts.

He attended the Rhode Island School of Design in the early '60s, where he refined the school's first glass studio.

Chihuly was granted a Fulbright fellowship in 1968 to become the first American glassblower at the renowned Venini Glass Factory on the island of Murano in Venice, Italy.

In 1971 he co-founded the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, which continues to be a leader in the world of contemporary glass art. Chihuly is also one of three artists to present a solo exhibit at the Louvre in Paris of both glass pieces and paintings.

As his art gained ground in the art world, Chihuly's desire and physical ability for the art form have been tested.

The milky glass of the "Irish Cylinders" was the last to be blown directly by Chihuly, who lost his left eye after a 1976 car accident in which he crashed through the windshield. He walked away with 250 stitches zigzagging down the left side of his face.

Chihuly's subsequent lack of depth perception made it nearly impossible to blow glass through the 4-foot-long tube. He created a team of master glassblowers who, with fire, heat and breath, breathed life into his creations.

He now works with up to 20 assistants on each piece, and doesn't apologize for not blowing glass.

"It's still my design, my thoughts," he said.

Under the watchful steel-blue eye of Chihuly the labor-intensive task of blowing a piece is punctuated with moments of drama.

The lead assistant, or gaffer, dips a blowpipe into a pool of clear glass heated in a 2,500-degree furnace.

The gaffer repeatedly dips the long pipe into the liquid until a large oval forms on the end. The glass is given color by rolling the hot mound across broken shards of colored glass and placed back in a second furnace to fuse the color to the molten ball.

Chihuly shouts out suggestions and whoops of joy as his assistants shape the glass with charred wooden paddles and long tongs.

This system frees Chihuly to travel the world and create new ideas. He estimates that each week a permanent installation of his work -- such as the 1998 Bellagio ceiling entitled "Fiori di Como" -- is completed, as well as a dozen museum exhibits in as many countries.

He might be busy, but family is a priority to Chihuly, who counts his 93-year-old mother, Viola, and 3-year-old son, Jackson, as his main sources of inspiration.

When Chihuly talks of his son, his demeanor is more focused, thoughtful.

"I've been writing him letters since he was little," Chihuly said. "He will have a big effect on me and my artwork as he gets a little older because he just gets so interesting."

The next big project is the "Chihuly Bridge of Glass," which is under construction in Tacoma, Wash., and scheduled for completion in the summer of 2002.

The 3500-ton bridge will lead to the Tacoma Museum of Glass, a coup for the glass movement that has finally been recognized as a fine-art form within the past 10 years.

Friend and fan

Stroemple considers himself to be a caretaker of Chihuly's work.

After two years of studying glass artists in the late '80s, Stroemple chose to collect Chihuly's cutting-edge artwork.

"No one else was doing what Dale was on such a level," Stroemple said.

Investment was Stroemple's original motivation, but love of the art process and product became his passion. He found himself wanting more pieces as he learned about the progressive art form.

He found the "Irish Cylinders" tucked under a metal shelf in Chihuly's studio in the early '90s and immediately wanted them for his collection.

The 44 opaque cylinders were hand-blown by Chihuly in 1975. He wrapped drawing transfers and text based on Irish authors and legends into the layers of the glass, a highly experimental technique in the early days of the studio glass movement.

"With glass there's an immediacy to it," Stroemple said of his fascination. "It's like a piece of caramel on the end and the gravity is pulling on it so you have to keep it going to get the final piece. You don't know exactly what is going to happen."

For the blowing of the "Venetians" series in 1995 Stroemple arose at 3:30 a.m. and drove three hours from Portland to the Boathouse in Seattle to witness the birth of Chihuly's vision.

"I had to be there to make sure if there was a great piece coming out of those ovens that I was going to put my name on it," Stroemple said.

This is a collection that could never have been born without a strong friendship and a lot of trust between the two men.

"I didn't pay cash for all of these," Stroemple said. "I've been able to arm-wrestle him out of some."

Clear focus

On a recent trip to Las Vegas, Chihuly, a favorite of the Hollywood set and Hillary Rodham Clinton, toured the large pieces at the LVAM, some of which he had not seen in years.

His assistants were pushing the easily distracted artist out the door to paint for a group of museum guests and media, but he was reluctant to leave the gallery.

"I'd forgotten what we had," Chihuly said, marveling at an iridescent chandelier he had created nearly 10 years ago. "This is great to see them again after so long."

He was finally persuaded to leave the gallery and walk outside, where more than 200 bottles of paint awaited his direction. Chihuly barked orders for people to line up. With paint in each fist he squirted color on shirts, jeans and shoes. He demanded colors from eager assistants and sloshed his once-black shoes in bright green paint and stepped on white T-shirts spread out on the ground.

"Do you like that?" he asked the audience as he grabbed for more paint. "It's good, huh? Yeah, I like this. More color!"

His standard uniform of a brightly colored silk shirt and pants -- customized and shipped to him on the road, where he spends an average of 240 days a year -- is splattered with paint as well as the orthopedic shoes he wears for his bad back.

He is in his element, surrounded by admirers and covered in art.