This past weekend, Grey and I decided to explore our inner child and visit the Museum of Glass.
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| Ceiling of sea creatures |
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| Glass sculptures on bridge to Glass Museum |
For those of you who live in the Pacific Northwest, I highly recommend making the trip, especially when there's no sunshine.
Currently there are two exhibits on display. The first is called 'Maestro' featuring recent works by Lino Tagliapietra. Seeing the waves of color floating through each of these pieces brought a sense of calm and made me smile.
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| Dinosaur |
The other exhibit is called 'SCAPES' by the brother/sister team Laura de Santillana and Alessandro Diaz de Santillana. Laura's pieces featuring mounds and orbs were a clear attraction for me, though Alessandro's metallic glass wall-hanging were easy to lose yourself in.
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| Celestial eggs |
And, of course, no visit is complete without viewing the work of Dale Chihuly
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| Chihuly sea creatures |
After meditating among the artwork, it was time to head to the main attraction: the Hot Shop. The artists were well at work on an exhibit that will be featured at UW Tacoma this fall, so everyone was completely entranced by them making 'soap bubbles' with these large orbs of fire.
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| Fire!! |
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| Demonstration on blowing glass bubbles |
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| It takes the whole team to blow a 50 lb glass bubble |
Seriously, fire brings out the giddy kid in every adult.
While Grey and I were watching the artists blow these large glass bubbles, we got to talking about the properties of glass. Couple of fun facts: glass is chemically classified as a liquid. Hard to imagine, huh? Think of it as being super viscous, more viscous than slow-moving liquids like honey. Apparently one can measure the movement over time, as done with some of the glass windows in cathedrals in Europe. Another fun fact is that most of the glass these artists work with is clear. To add color, they will melt in color bars or add granules of color to the clear glass. This all is kept separate from the main kiln.
How did you spend your Labor Day weekend?
Glass blowing is in a word: incredible. When I was living in Austin, you could often find me just hanging out at a local glass blowing shop. I could never get enough of it. Glad you ventured out and enjoyed yourself this weekend.
ReplyDeleteThe sea creatures was by far my favorite!
ReplyDeleteGorgeous.
ReplyDeleteI live on the outskirts of Tacoma and have been wanting to go to this place for years. Hopefully I can drag my husband with me one rainy day.
ReplyDeleteI love, love, love glass art! I would have been in heaven. So jealous!
ReplyDeleteSo beautiful!!!!! I love things like that so I'm totally jealous!!! Thank u for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHow lovely! I have a particular fondness for the sea creatures. What a beautiful art form.
ReplyDeleteI've always thought it would be fun to try my hand at glass blowing, but I know I'd likely suffer terrible injuries if I did!
I love the pictures of the glass museum! Thanks so much for sharing. Those are gorgeous. Glad you had a good Labor Day weekend.
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