Chihuly Glass

Famous glass artist Dale Chihuly is from Tacoma; therefore, one of the coolest things about Tacoma is the amount of Chihuly glass on display in the city.  From the obvious art museums to the less obvious college libraries to the even less obvious bar, Chihuly's glass is everywhere.

The Chihuly walking tour is a great way to see Chuhuly's glass.  We tried to start at the Tacoma Art Museum, but since I do not do thorough research, they were closed.  What we did of the Chihuly walking tour ended up being a very filled afternoon anyway.

First stop was Union Station.  What once used to be the end of the transcontinental railroad is now a federal court house.  Chihuly has five works of art there.  The first is a colorful chandelier hanging from the dome of the building.  It brings to mind the contents of a candy shop artfully strung up from the ceiling.  The Monarch Window looked a little like a school of jelly fish swimming across the glass.  At first glance, all the sculptures appeared orange, but from different angles, blues, yellows, and reds came out.  From the outside, the sculptures took on even different shades.  Why monarchs?  When the trains go by the building, the glass sculptures shake, and if the light is hitting just right, orange light flickers across the floor.  We did not experience this first hand.

Chandelier

Monarch Window

The next artwork in Union Station are many of Chihuly's drawings.  They are not drawings for drawing's sake, but instead, drawings as preparation for making glass baskets.  I find glass making fascinating in that the artist does not do all the work him or herself but has many gaffers (people who blow the glass) to help.  Chihuly used these drawings to plan out color schemes, shapes, and to illustrate the movements the gaffers had to do to create the correct shape.  The next artwork, Reeds, was the simplest and most earthy Chihuly sculpture I have ever seen.  Two simple logs with red glass reeds sticking straight up.  It was simple, but beautiful, like a log on fire.  The final sculpture in Union Station was Ikebana Lakawana.  Lakawana for the name of the steel company whose name is stamped on the building's grand window frames and Ikebana for the long flowerlike glass sculptures.  This work was a beautiful mix of soft and hard because of the circular steel grid that all of the glass Ikebana are woven onto.

Basket Drawings

Ikebana Lakawana

Next, we walked to the Bridge of Glass.  The bridge has three sections - Seaform Pavilion, Crystal Towers, and Venetian Wall.  The Seaform Pavilion is a ceiling filled with thousands of sea forms - think sea urchins and the like.  While this is at least the second time I have been to the Bridge of Glass, it is the first time I noticed the many putti or cherubs lingering throughout the ceiling of sea forms.    The second part of the bridge's artwork is two giant posts with what I can only think to describe as giant blue-green ice cubes.  They actually look a lot like rock candy.  The final artwork, is a wall of venetian vases, all different shapes with many Ikebana stemming out and around.

Seaform Pavilion

Crystal Tower

Venetian Wall

The next to last stop on the tour was the University of Washington Tacoma Library.  In the tower of the library, a room set up for quiet and group studying, is an enormous red chandelier - Chinook Red Chandelier.  It did not look very different in terms of structure from the chandelier in Union Station, but because it was all one deep red color, the physical structure of the piece was much more delineated.  

The final stop of the tour, was the Swiss Bar, one of my favorite places to get a drink in Tacoma.  The first time I went to the Swiss, I didn't even realize they had eight Chihuly sculptures!  Sitting above the South African mahogany bar (a gorgeous piece of work itself) are eight venetians, just like the giant vases on the Bridge of Glass.  The fact that this little bar in Tacoma has eight works of art from such a world-renowned sculptor is amazing in itself.  The best part is the story of how they got there.  While Chihuly and his team were working on the installation of the work in Union Station, they frequented the Swiss.  Out of the blue, Chihuly offered to bring in venetians to display above the bar.  And so it was.  And who doesn't like a tour that ends at a bar!!