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American glass arfist.Dale Chihuly has
I staged outdoor installations all over
thfe world. Now he exhibits at the
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,
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Geraldine Rudge strolls
through 'Gardens of Glass
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his 40-year career has been well-docuale Chihuly
little
mented,
not needs
least by
theintroduction
glass artist himself, via books and DVDs published by
his company Portland Press. Seattle, his hometown, is ablaze with his colourful artworks,
from hotel and airport lobbies to the Chihuly
Bridge of Glass at nearby Tacoma. His output
is tremendous: the bridge alone contains 109
individual pieces, and his work is held by over
200 museums around the world. Chihuly's
work is in-your-face - no other glass artist
works on the scale he does. And no single
glass artist has been more influential in
encouraging the use of glass for outside
spaces. Neil Wilkin and Sarah Davis (see p.34
this issue) are just two glass artists who have
followed his lead in work for outdoor settings.
Chihuly first exhibited in Britain at the
Victoria and Albert Museum in 2001. At
Chihuly at the V&A, (reviewed Crafts No.174
January/February 2002) a river of glass flowed
through the medieval gallery spilling over into
the Pirelli, a foretaste of the dramatic interventions Chihuly is capable of creating for outside
spaces. This was pure decorative art. There
is no point searching for a deeper conceptual
perspective: there isn't one, which is why his
detractors - and the V&A show generated
much hostile criticism - dislike his work.
However, one thing everyone can agree on is
that the sheer scale of Gardens of Glass outranks any glass show seen in the UK before.
Some nine sea containers of glass have been
shipped to Kew to be used in 25 installations,
installed by a team of 15 or more people working round the clock for two weeks. There are
site-specific works in the Palm House, the
Temperate House and the Princess of Wales
Conservatory, with other pieces placed here
and there in the landscape. Kew has around
40,000 plants in its collection; within the
glasshouses, climatic environments range
from Dry Tropics to Alpine, providing plenty
of scope for artistic intervention.
Colour, scale and spectacle are the key
components of the Chihuly aesthetic.
Underlying this is a love of Venetian glass,
with its baroque twists and twirls - as apparent in the putti andflora of his earlier works
as in his later abstract organic flourishes.
Works are composed of numerous individual glass pieces attached by wire to metal
armatures, in a repertoire comprising a number of repeat forms, such as the descriptively
titled Blue Herons, Blue Baskets and Red and
Neodymium Reeds, which are grouped to form
installations. Long retired from working glass
himself, after an accident, Chihuly now harJULY(AUGUST 2005
ABOVE: 'Kew Palm House Star', Polyvitro, plastic, 2005
OPPOSITE PAGE: 'Thames Skiff', 'Walla Wallas', 'Palm House Towers', all hand-blown glass, 2005
nesses the talents of the best international
glass-blowers to interpret his vision to his
specifications - latterly using energetic,
splash-and-slash Jackson Pollock-like compositions. Past collaborators have included
Venetian glass artists Lino Tagliapietra and
Pino Signoretti. He has 500 glass-blowers on
his books, and up 150 working for him at any
one time. Chihuly oversees a production-line
process more akin to a factory than a studio.
Another thing no one can dispute is
Chihuly's technical mastery of glass, which
has allowed him to blow pieces on an unparal-
leled scale. The development of techniques,
such as blowing glass vertically from hydraulic
lifts have enabled works like Reeds - tall
columns of glass - to reach spectacular heights
of three to four metres.
For many visitors to Gardens of Glass the
first view will be of Richard Turner's and
Decimus Burton's Palm House and its lake.
Kewls glass structures are of a scale daunting
even by Chihuly's standards - his work
depends on its own large presence, but the
Palm House reaches around 20 metres at its
highest point. Thus the colourful Yellow Palm
CRAFTS29
dale chihuly
CLOCKWISE from TOP LEFT: 'Green Grass' and 'Blue Herons' in Princess of Wales Conservatory, 'Trumpets' in Temperate House, 'Blue Baskets' in
Princess of Wales Conservatory, all hand-blown glass, 2005
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'Neodymium Reeds' and 'Red Reeds', hand-blown glass, among succulents and cacti in Princess of Wales Conservatory, 2005
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'Walla Wallas', floating hand-blown glass orbs on the Palm House Lake, 2005
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House Tower and Scarlet Palm House Tower are
overwhelmed by the sheer scale and majesty
of Turners and Burton's work. Large multicoloured floating orbs entitled Walla Wallas
and a Thames Shiff installation, containing a
tangle of Chihuly forms, suffer a similar fate
on the Palm House lake.
Once inside the Palm House, it takes a
while to get your eye in, with every splash
of colour a potential Chihuly installation except here the colour belongs to the flowers
of the Hibiscus and the Ixora Philip Rapsy,
But look up, and there; hanging high above,
is Kew Palm House Star - an installation at
once surprising and beguiling, in its lack
of colour, construction and siting. Fat,
silver Polyvitro hybrid pods hang under
the Travellers tree: strange fruit indeed,
but the momentary suspension of disbeliefarising in the main from the uncharacteristic
subtlety - gives piece a powerful impact.
Polyvitro is a type of polymer, and Chihuly
JULY/AUGUST 2005
has developed its use as a lightweight alternative to glass in other works here, though less
convincingly. Crystals, an installation of randomly placed giant Polyvitro chunks of ice in
and around a hedge seems without rhyme or
reason. The giant MulticolouredPolyvitro
Chandelier- suspended from the ceiling in
the Temperate house, with its candy coloured
balls - may be popular with children, but
illustrates just how delicate that balance
between art and nature needs to be.
If a few works fail to live up to ones expectations, they are in the minority, and, in the
Princess of Wales Conservatory, there are
examples of Chihuly at his very best. At the
entrance is The Sun at Kew'Gardens,a vast
centerpiece of over 1,000 pieces, writhing
tendrils and bulbous forms, predominantly
yellow, of a scale and impact that literally
makes you catch your breath. Within the conservatory Chihuly's gift for positioning objects
in settings, to make you look at them afresh
- perhaps a legacy of his earlier training as
an interior designer - is evident. Here lilac
and red Reeds stand out against the huge
grey mass of succulents - Agavefranzosinii
- and a series of Blue Baskets with rounded
contours and vivid cobalt hues create a dialogue with the hard architectural forms of
cacti and rock. In the ponds, blue-tipped
Heron-forms sprout among the lilies, against
a backdrop of Spanish Moss, while Niijima
Floats,with reptilian surface decoration,
sit like fat toads in the shadows.
All in all this is a spectacular show, and
Kew is to be congratulated for the vision
to bring Gardens of Glass to fruition. 0
Gardensof Glass: Chihuly at Kew is at the Royal
Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9
3AB, (020) 8332 5602/5605 until 15 January
2006. Admission: Adults £10, concs £7, children
up to 16 years free, blind and partially sighted
free. There will be a series of evening views when
installations will be floodlit. Call for details.
cRAFTs33
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
TITLE: Hot Glass Hybrids
SOURCE: Crafts no195 Jl/Ag 2005
WN: 0518203682003
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