glass art

After the glassblowing experience, we headed to downtown Tacoma to the Museum of Glass with its distinctive stainless steel cone.

With Tacoma being the hometown of Dale Chihuly and the location for several glassblowing studios, I expected great things from this museum. Sad to say, it was a let down.

There are two things to do in the museum: go to the galleries or go to the Hot Shop to watch the glassblowers. As I had just experienced glassblowing, I wasn't too interested in that, so we went to the galleries. There was White Light, an exhibition of opaque glass sculptures by Daniel Clayman (shouldn't he be working with clay instead of glass? lol). There was also Chihuly's Laguna Murano Chandelier, Dante Marioni's Form, Color, Pattern, and Contrasts: A Glass Primer.

While there were some fantastic work on display, I expected to see much more. We probably went through the exhibits in 10 minutes! (This reminded me of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, where I expected to see many O'Keefe paintings, but there actually weren't that many.) Having paid $10 and $8 (for students--college students are actually free on Sundays), we didn't feel like we got our money's worth. So, we headed over to the Hot Shop, which is housed in the conical part of the building. This is the view of the cone from one of the audience seats below.

At the Hot Shop, glassblowers do work and someone explains what's going on and answers questions. There were a number of glassblowers there. Here are some shots of them working. However, as I said, having just done it, I didn't have the same fascination with watching as other people did.

Afterwards, we went to the gift shop. I almost feel as if the gift shop had more glass than the galleries. They're all quite expensive, though, which made me feel better about how much I paid for the glassblowing experience--that price alone is worth the finished product.

Outside on the plaza, took this picture of the bridge and the Tacoma Dome.

After ascending the "grand staircase," took this shot of the cone, an old industrial building, and the bridge.

We then headed to the Chihuly Bridge of Glass. On the way to the museum, we had seen it from the ground.

When we got up there, it was fantastic. There were numerous pieces, all by Chihuly, and everyone can see it for free.

The bridge has three aspects to it. First is the Venetian Wall, an 80-foot installation with over 100 sculptures. I took pictures of sections of the wall.

The second part of the bridge are the two Crystal Towers. Julia says that, from the freeway, it looks like someone put together a bunch of bluish plastic bags, and I agree with her. Even on the bridge but from a distance, it still looks like that.

It looks better up close. Here's a shot closer shot.

The third part is the Seaform Pavilion, a ceiling with over 2,000 pieces that is meant to give the feeling of being underwater. This was my favorite part of the bridge. It was really awe-inspiring. It was really too bad that it was a gray day so we didn't quite get the full effect of sunlight poring through the various shapes and colors.

I didn't take pictures of all the sections, but here are some shots.

Here's a view of the glass museum and part of the bridge of glass from the other side of the bridge.

On the other side of the bridge is the Washington State History Museum and Union Station, which now houses the U.S. District Courthouse. We didn't have time to go to the museum, but I wanted to go to the museum, especially since I could see from across the street that it had some glass art. It was closed, though, but we peeked in the doors and could see it had a Chihuly chandelier and a number of glass plates against the half-dome glass window.

Overall, we got our fill of glass art. Though there wasn't much to see in the glass museum, the bridge definitely made up for it.