Glass by Dale Chihuly

Glass, photo by Spencer Olinek.

In the course of looking for photos for Michigan in Pictures, I see a lot that I say “I can’t blog this today, but I’ll definitely come back some day and do it.” Often, some day never comes. Sometimes it does though…

Here’s a photo from the 2005 Dale Chihuly glass exhibit at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. Get it at the Wallpapery delicious size.

There’s a Dale Chihuly Wikipedia page and at Dale Chihuly’s web site you can see a lot of his work including a ton of videos at his web site (check out “Chihuly In Action”). His bio says:

Dale Chihuly is most frequently lauded for revolutionizing the Studio Glass movement by expanding its original premise of the solitary artist working in a studio environment to encompass the notion of collaborative teams and a division of labor within the creative process.

However, Chihuly’s contribution extends well beyond the boundaries both of this movement and even the field of glass: his achievements have influenced contemporary art in general. Chihuly’s practice of using teams has led to the development of complex, multipart sculptures of dramatic beauty that place him in the leadership role of moving blown glass out of the confines of the small, precious object and into the realm of large-scale contemporary sculpture. In fact, Chihuly deserves credit for establishing the blown glass form as an accepted vehicle for installation and environmental art beginning in the late twentieth century and continuing today.

Here’s a cool slideshow of Flickr photos from the 2005 Dale Chihuly glass exhibit at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.