Dale Chihuly

Dale Chihuly is a Slovak American glass sculptor and entrepreneur. From the beginning of his involvement with glass in the 1960s, Dale Chihuly has championed the use of blown glass as a vehicle for sculpture, focusing on the vessel in his explorations of color and form. Setting aside complex techniques in favor of letting the hot glass naturally find its own shape, he has produced work that is characterized by its large, gravity-influenced forms and minimal tooling as much as by its striking palette of colors.

Chihuly is better known, however, for his vessels, which he began to develop in the mid-1970s. From this period until well into the 1980s, he focused all of his interest in sculpture on the vessel, making individual pieces as well as installations that gradually increased in size as the technical capabilities of his team and his facilities grew.

Chihuly has always been interested in architecture, landscape, and glass of super-heroic scale, and when he moves his attention from object to environment, the result is nothing less than spectacular. Temporary outdoor projects such as the 1996 “Chihuly over Venice,” or “Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000,” are unheard of in the craft-associated media to which glass belongs. Chihuly's singular mixture of ambition, vision, and enchantment comes closest to that of contemporary Land artists, such as Christo.

Portrait photo by Bryan Ohno

You can visit the artist offical web site here.