DALE CHIHULY - Biography

Dale Chihuly is recognised as a leading figure in contemporary glass. Born in Tacoma, Washington in 1941, Dale Chihuly studied interior design and architecture at the University of Washington in the early 1960's. By 1965 he had become captivated by the process of glassblowing and enrolled in the University of Wisconsin 's hot glass programme, the first of its kind in the United States, established by the founder of the Studio Glass movement, Harvey K. Littleton. Having gained a degree in sculpture, Chihuly continued his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design where he later established the glass programme and taught for over a decade, influencing a generation of artists.

In 1968, Chihuly was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to work at the Venini factory on the island of Murano, Venice. His observation of the Italians' team approach to blowing glass was to have lasting influence on his approach to glassblowing. Inspired by the teamwork he saw there, he revolutionised the Studio Glass movement in the United States by replacing the idea of the solitary artist working in a studio environment with the practice of collaborative teams and a division of labour within the creative process. Chihuly's practice of using teams led to the development of large, complex, multipart sculptures, which transformed blown glass from the confines of the small, precious object and into the realm of large-scale contemporary sculpture. In this way, Chihuly established the blown-glass form as an accepted vehicle for installation and environmental art.

Chihuly began working with glass at a time when material and experimental concerns surrounding the medium and technique were paramount. He was influenced by an environment that fostered the blurring of boundaries separating all the arts and as early as 1967 was using neon, argon, and blown-glass forms to create room-sized installations of organic, freestanding, plant-like imagery. He brought this interdisciplinary approach to the arts to the Pilchuck School in Stanwood , Washington , which he co-founded in 1971 and where he served as first artistic director until 1989. Under Chihuly's guidance, Pilchuck became a gathering place for international artists with diverse backgrounds. With this international glass centre, Chihuly has led the avant-garde in the development of glass as a fine art.

Chihuly is a prodigiously prolific artist whose work explores the material's properties of translucency and transparency. Stylistically, Chihuly's sculptures in glass have explored colour, line and assemblage over the last forty years. His work ranges from the single vessel to indoor/outdoor site-specific installations and he is perhaps best known for his multipart blown compositions. He has created a wide vocabulary of blown forms, revisiting and refining earlier shapes while at the same time creating exciting new elements, such as his recent Fiori, all of which demonstrate mastery and understanding of glassblowing techniques. Earlier forms, such as the Baskets, Seaforms, Ikebana, Venetians and Chandeliers from the late 1970s through to the 1990s continue to reappear with fresh variations and within new contexts.

Since the early 1980s, Chihuly's work has been marked by intense, vibrant colour as well as subtle linear decoration. At first he achieved patterns by fusing into the surface of his vessels 'drawings' composed of pre-arranged glass threads; he then had his forms blown in optic moulds, which created ribbed motifs. He also explored in the Macchia series bold, colourful lip wraps that contrasted sharply with the brilliant colours of the vessels. Finally, beginning with the Venetians of the early 1990s, elongated, linear blown forms, a product of the glassblowing process, have become part of his vocabulary, resulting in highly baroque, writhing elements.

As well as being highly visual, Chihuly's work is at times autobiographical. His fascination with abstracted flower forms comes from an early love of the plants and flowers in his mother's garden in Tacoma . Series such as Seaforms and Niijima Floats allude to his childhood in Tacoma and his love of the sea. Even in the few instances in which Chihuly has chosen to respond to earlier historical decorative arts forms, the imagery has personal significance. The Basket series, for instance, developed out of the woven Northwest Coast Indian baskets that inspired Chihuly in 1977.

In more recent years, Chihuly has created a number of major installation exhibitions including Chihuly over Venice (1995-1996) and Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem (2000) at the Tower of David Museum. These two exhibitions demonstrate a major change in Chihuly's approach from an overriding focus on technique to the dramatic effect of large-scale environmental installations.

While elements of the earlier installations allude to natural phenomena such as icicles and vegetation, gardens provide the dominant theme in Chihuly's most recent conservatory exhibitions. Recent installations include Chihuly in the Park: A Garden of Glass at Chicago's Garfield Park Conservatory (2001-2002), the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus, Ohio and Atlanta Botanical Gardens . Dale has a long-standing fascination with glasshouses and these installations show sensitivity to architectural context as well as his interest in the interplay of natural light on the glass, exploiting its translucency and transparency. Such sites enable the artist to juxtapose monumental, organically shaped sculptural forms with beautiful landscaping, establishing a direct and immediate interaction between nature and art.

Dale Chihuly was involved in a car accident that resulted in the loss of sight in one eye and suffered a shoulder injury that ended his glassblowing and led to his role as director of the team. He now lives in Seattle and is closely involved with his studio there, as well as traveling widely, working on exhibitions and inspiring the next generation of glass artists. Dale Chihuly's studios, including an old racing-shell factory in Seattle called The Boathouse, as well as buildings in Ballard and Tacoma, have become a mecca for artists, collectors and museum professionals.

Dale Chihuly has described his exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew as 'a dream come true', saying 'if someone had asked me where I would want to exhibit, I would have said Kew Gardens'. Gardens of Glass:Chihuly at Kew runs from 28 May 2005 to 15 January 2006.