Chihuly. You have probably never heard of him, but he is one of our greatest current artists. His medium is glass. Have a look at his site, Chihuly.com this guy rules. My wife and I have watched quite a few videos about him. He was a hippy artist in the 70's and started blowing glass in his basement. Truly an inspirational story of someone who started something small and just kept getting better at it. I like that kind of story simple beginnings that manifest themselves to greatness over time with hard work and faith in themselves.
Here is a flickr photo group of some of his work at the Kew Gardens installation last fall. super cool flickr photos. I have borrowed an image to demonstrate here.
Now that is cool. My wife and I watched his videos with fascination and saw on of his larger installations at the Victoria and Albert Museum when we used to live in London.
We spent new years 2003 in Venice and visited Murano, just like all of the other touristicos. We were impressed by how far Chihuly had taken Glass as an art form. It was also interesting to see some of the tourist schlock that was still being sold suckers in Venice.
Please people please stop buying these damn glass clowns...
it is simple economics folks. You stop buying them and they will stop making them.
Now back to Chihuly and glass, Mercedes and I lived in Sweden during the summer of 2003. We desperately wanted to get up to Kosta boda, which is the glass capital of Sweden. Unfortunately it didn't happen. Those Swedes know design and they do some cool stuff with the medium.
at the end of the day Dale Chihuly is still the best alive today. If you get the chance to see an installation or watch a video showing him at work Video here , check it out. You won't be disappointed. You may even be tempted to throw out that clown.
