If you have never seen a Chihuly installation, you are in for an unparalleled experience. This unrivaled master of blown glass creates wonderlands of colorful globes, brilliant, serpentine “reeds” and curvy “fiori” in awe-inspiring landscapes. His work, which has been called “liquid light,” has appeared in museums around the world such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. I was privileged to view Chihuly’s work first-hand (one of his “Persian Ceilings”) at the Naples Museum of Art in Florida, where I used to live. If you’ve been to the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, you probably have seen his work on the ceiling of the reception hall – his magnificent “chandeliers” of 2,000 hand-blown glass flowers, “Fiori di Como.” His interest in architecture and landscaping have come into play with his temporary outdoor spectacles like his 1996 “Chihuly Over Venice,” in which he adorned the canals of Venice with his brilliant chandeliers, and his “Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000” where his luminous sculptures emerged from the ruins of the Temple of David. And, although he has created many temporary garden installations in places like the New York Botanical Garden and Phipps Conservatory, this is his first in a desert botanical environment.

The seventeen installation areas in the Garden will feature such creations as Chihuly’s “Saffron Tower” that features a quarter-mile of neon, a blue moon displayed at the 2004 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, and a trio of yellow-green desert wildflowers Chihuly and his team created exclusively for the Desert Botanical Garden. It took about a year to design the exhibit around the desert flora and cacti. The Chihuly glass forms will be grouped in between and around the desert plants, adding color and light, while becoming part of the desert landscape. The glass sculptures can take extremes of both hot and cold.

The vocabulary of Chihuly glass forms includes Baskets, Seaforms, Ikebana, Venetians, Chandeliers and Fiori. He has done “events” in which he has floated glass bubbles on the water of a small pond and installed glass sculptures along a river. His first forms in the 1970’s and ‘80’s were individual vessels inspired by Native American textiles and baskets. As he and his team became more technically adept, his pieces became larger and more colorful. During the early 1980’s, he was known for his “Seaforms” and “Macchias.”  By the late 1980’s he had begun his “Persians” series, evolving from small nested groupings to large wall, floor and ceiling installations, such as seen in the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. “Over time I developed the most organic, natural way of working with glass,” he says, “using the least amount of tools that I could. The glass looks as if it comes from nature.” Dale Chihuly, 67, was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. Chihuly’s first interest was architecture and interior design, in which he received his BA at the University of Washington in 1965. He started to see the magic of glass when he took weaving classes and incorporated strips of fused glass and metals into his tapestries. “One night, about the time I graduated from college, l melted some stained glass. I had a little oven that was about a foot square. I put a pipe in there, not a blow pipe, just a regular pipe and gathered up some glass on the end and blew a bubble. From that moment on, I wanted to be a glass blower.”

He went on to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, where he studied the art of glass under Harvey Littleton, who was the main contributor to the modern glass art movement in the United States. After finishing his graduate studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), he received a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Venini glass factory in Venice. Chihuly established an important glass program at RISD upon his return from Venice and in 1971 he founded the Pilchuck Glass School, which has become the premier international school for glass artists. During his years of teaching, Chihuly encouraged his students to think in unorthodox ways – to mold the glass into colorful forms and sculptures.

Chihuly’s designs are taken from life. His floral (fiori) forms were influenced by the rhododendrons and azaleas his mother grew in her garden in Tacoma, Washington. Chihuly doesn’t do these splendiferous exhibits all by himself, of course. He has a team of about 107 glass blowers that he directs to create the sculptures in studios all over the world. Chihuly’s main base of operations is in Seattle at a 25,000 square-foot studio he calls “The Boathouse.” Due to Chihuly’s influence on the art, Seattle now has the largest concentration of glass artists in the world. Chihuly’s success is not only due to the exquisite beauty of his work, but also to his charismatic personality and tireless promotion of glass artistry.

For the first time, the Desert Botanical Garden will have a timed admission for a special event. By controlling the number of visitors at one particular time, the Garden can ensure visitors will have adequate parking and will be able to enjoy the display without having to fight crowds. There will be three timed entry sessions: 8:00 AM to Noon; Noon to 4:00 PM; and 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Tickets: Adults $15, Seniors $13.50, Students (ages 12-18 and college with ID) $7.50, children (age 3-12) $5, and children under 3 admitted free. For reduced group rates, call 480.481.8104. The Desert Botanical Garden is located at 1201 N. Galvin Parkway in Phoenix.

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