The Exhibition
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden was proud to host a glass art exhibition by world-renowned artist Dale Chihuly.
Chihuly at Fairchild was the first exhibition of its kind to be held at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. A spectacular sequence of organically shaped and vibrantly colored glass sculptures were set throughout Fairchild’s 83-acre garden landscape. The exhibition was specifically designed to respond to Fairchild’s collections, landscape, and vistas.
“We are thrilled that the world’s best glass artist, Dale Chihuly, is coming to the world’s best tropical botanic garden,” commented Dr. Mike Maunder, director of Fairchild. He added, “Fairchild is famous for its conservation work and educational outreach, as well as for its stunning landscapes. Mr. Chihuly’s art and Fairchild’s beauty are truly a magical combination. Chihuly’s glass art pieces, with their beautiful shapes and colors, encompass a majority of Fairchild’s uplands, including the palmetum, arboretum and its two conservatories. “We’re certain that as you stroll through the garden, you’ll wonder if what you’re looking at is glass or nature,” said Maunder.
Tropical Nights
Guests experienced an entirely different exhibition as the magic of Dale Chihuly’s glass sculptures and Fairchild’s spectacular garden views and beautiful collections were brought to life at night with dramatic lighting.
About the Artist
Dale Chihuly is a leading figure of contemporary glass and has exhibited extensively in the United States and internationally, from Venice to Jerusalem, Iceland to Japan and most recently England. Chihuly at Fairchild, included some of Chihuly’s best-loved series of work, including Macchia, Ikebana and Nijima Floats, as well as some never before seen works like the Neon Tumbleweeds.
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 of both 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.
A prodigiously prolific artist whose work balances content with an investigation of the material's properties of translucency and transparency, Chihuly began working with glass at a time when reverence for the medium and for technique was paramount.
Stylistically during the past forty years, Chihuly's sculptures in glass have explored color, line, and assemblage. Although his work ranges from the single vessel to indoor/outdoor site-specific installations, he is best known for his multipart blown compositions. These works fall into the categories of mini-environments designed for the tabletop and large, often serialized forms displayed in groupings on pedestals or attached to specially engineered structures that dominate large exterior or interior spaces.
Since the early 1980s, all of Chihuly's work has been marked by intense, vibrant color and by subtle linear decoration. At first he achieved patterns by fusing into the surface of his vessels “drawings” composed of prearranged glass threads; he then had his forms blown in optic molds, which created ribbed motifs. He also explored in the Macchia series bold, colorful lip wraps that contrasted sharply with the brilliant colors of his vessels. Finally, beginning with the Venetians of the early 1990s, elongated, linear blown forms, a product of the glassblowing process, have become part of his vocabulary, resulting in highly baroque, writhing elements.
