The Glass House

The Museum of Glass is a gallery featuring contemporary art in molten glass. It has glassblowing demonstrations, films about artists who use glass as their medium, a hands-on art studio for visitors of all ages, glass exhibitions, and a large selection of glass objects (from jewelry, housewares to home decor) that are for sale in the Museum shop. The glass objects for sale are all very beautiful. I would love to have a glass art for myself if they weren't so expensive ($50.00 for a small glass piece the size of a coin). It doesn't take a lot of money to appreciate beauty though, and I did find the entire museum colorful, whimsical and enchanting even though I wasn't able to take home anything for myself.

I've heard of glass blowing before but I didn't really have an idea on how much hard work it entails. It was only through the Museum of Glass that I was able to learn more about the hard part of the craft. I watched a live glassblowing demonstration inside an amphitheater called the Hot Shop, where the temperature must've been more than a hundred degrees inside. The artists creating the glass sculpture have been there the whole day, chugging water and turning molten hot glass into something shapely. It felt stuffy and the hot air was a bit suffocating. We were told that the more intricate the sculpture, the longer the artists stay in the shop. Talk about love for their craft. I couldn't even stay there for more than twenty minutes.

I guess the biggest pay-off after such a tedious creative process is the breathtaking output. All of the glass works look fancy and amazing. I'm not an art expert but it doesn't take an idiot to appreciate man's ability to fashion glass into something so creative and majestic. Here are a few of the standing works of art around the museum:

Cappy Thompson's Gathering Light is a mural about the art of glass making. It is a painting made entirely out of glass. When you see the piece upclose, you'll actually see bits of glass molded into one big picture (or three, but you get what I mean). It reminded me of stained glass windows at church, except this one's more vivid and mythical.

These were children's drawings that the artists turned into sculptures, fifty-two all in all. Very nice. It was my favorite among all the exhibits. Everybody's a fan of children and their ingenious imagination.

Martin Blank's Fluent Steps. At night, they look like roaring fire on water. It's amazing.

Sculptures leading to the Dale Chihuly's Bridge of Glass. Dale Chihuly is a Tacoma native commissioned to create a 500 ft bridge filled with exuberant glass art. I really, really, really like all of his installations in this overpass of art. The Chihuly Bridge of Glass connects the Museum of Glass and the train station (Union) but the real magic is when you look up and see the roof filled with hundreds of glass sculptures. It's like walking inside a kaleidoscope. It's very beautiful. I took a few pictures of my favorite parts. Spot the cherub in the first one!

Isn't it festive? It reminded me of The Beatles' Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. There's a line in the song that goes, "A girl with kaleidoscope eyes / Cellophane flowers of yellow and green / Towering over your head". And tower over my head they did, in glass. :)

Those small tubes down there are actually Howard Ben Tre's Water Forest, a commissioned glass sculpture inspired by the rise and fall of the tides. Water is a prominent figure in Washington culture, the museum itself is beside a bay full of parked yachts. I took this picture while climbing up the steps to Chihuly's Bridge, as I was looking at the Tacoma dome and at the bridge that connects Tacoma to the rest of Washington. Perfect skies are always the prettiest, don't you think? :)

That is all! If you're up for a trip, here's the address:

Museum of Glass

1801 Dock St.

Tacoma, WA 98402

♥