Last year, when Dale Chihuly, possibly the only glass artist in the history of the medium to assume the status of household name, sued two glassblowers — one, a former assistant — for mimicking his iconic forms, the art world reacted with a collective gasp.
The suit, the New York Times noted, inadvertently highlighted the extensive role played by collaborators in the glassmaking process and, in particular, the work of Chihuly, who does not blow glass himself due to a shoulder injury. The assistant, for his part, argued that during his tenure with Chihuly, he had originated ideas that became Chihuly pieces.
The suit marked a first — and still unresolved — pass into the murky territory of intellectual property and the nebulous boundaries of collaboration within the glass community, where perhaps unbeknownst to most, it is standard operating procedure for works of delicate-looking-but-anvil-heavy glass art to be coaxed into existence by a team of players and labeled with one artist's name. Now, an exhibit at the Arts Center makes a subtle attempt to explain the collaborative nature of glass-making by mixing documentary photographs of the process into an exhibit of cutting-edge pieces by some of Seattle's most creative and ambitious glass artists.
Photographer Russell Johnson, whose 31 images capture most of the show's 39 artists at work, has been the official photographer of the Pilchuck Glass School since the early 1990s. The school, cofounded by Chihuly in 1971 in Stanwood, Wash., north of Seattle, helped turn the Pacific Northwest into the hub of contemporary American glassmaking, said exhibit curator Margery Aronson. Most of the artists in the show have been students, faculty or artists-in-residence at Pilchuck (and Aronson curates the Pilchuck Glass Collection in downtown Seattle).
More than anything, the sheer size of the artists' work illustrates the idea that — because of safety reasons, the weight of the glass and the limited time before it cools — glass art is a team effort. As one image demonstrates, it takes a small crowd of people to create a large boat-shaped form by Swedish artist Bertil Vallien. As Vallien looks on, artist Norman Courtney, working as an uncredited assistant on the piece, pours liquid glass into a mold; two more assistants stand by in the background.
Chihuly, with whom the Arts Center's future is inextricably linked as the future site of an 11,000-square-foot Chihuly museum, makes an appearance with something relatively unexpected. Absent are the Sea Creatures Gone Wild forms for which he is best known. Instead, a nearly 5-foot-tall blown glass interpretation of ikebana, a golden vase echoed in the gold-and-red blossom of a poppy with red and purple-green leaves, has the presence of a small monument.
For other artists, the creative process begins after someone else has blown the glass. Glass painter Cappy Thompson will lead a workshop at the Arts Center this weekend; she typically uses a glass vessel pre-made by another artist — say, Benjamin Moore, whose own flying saucer of red and clear glass appears nearby — as a "canvas" for her painting. Layers of colored enamel go on upside-down and inside each piece, like her intricate floral vase. Dick Weiss and Walter Lieberman, who call themselves "WD 40," paint with oil on glass to create a transparent image with an incised appearance, like the combination of figure and text on a blown glass vessel in the exhibit.
As the future site of the Chihuly museum and a new glass hot shop, the Arts Center will soon be up to its ears in glass. Smartly, the Center is working now to grow and educate a local audience for the medium — though as one of the few hot glass destinations on the East Coast, outside visitors will surely be flocking in as well. Even if glass art is not exactly your cup of tea, give this show a shot — the diversity and virtuosity of work might surprise you.
In a smaller, adjacent gallery, photographs by Sam Abell provide a different sort of diversion. This year, the Arts Center invited the National Geographic photographer, a world traveler many times over during his 35-year career, to teach a master artist workshop in photography. The five-day session, slated for early February, with 10 seats at $800 a pop, sold out shortly after its announcement.
On display, a group of images from an Abell retrospective at the University of Virginia Art Museum in Charlotte turn a lens on "the life behind things." They are mysteriously beautiful photographs that make you wonder about the process — be it simple, complex, serendipitous or methodical — that leads to capturing a memorable image. Tomatoes (incongruous splashes of color heaped on a gray compost pile) or feet (bizarre and cadaverous clad in toe-socks) become everyday objects imbued with a sense of the profoundly alien.
Abell, in particular, succeeds at finding his way into places and situations where he can capture great images — and at imparting the importance of that process to students, said photographer Beth Reynolds, who coordinates the Arts Center's photography program.
"The work that we do as documentary photographers is all about building relationships … it's not about dropping names [like National Geographic to gain access]; it's about personal interactions. When students who are not professionals or semi-professionals hear about that, it's very encouraging to them to know that, well, I don't have to be up here [gesture] to be able to do the kind of stories I want to do. I just have to be honest and true about my work," she said.
This article appears in Jan 10-16, 2007.