About the Art
Although not so grand in scale as many of Dale Chihuly’s better-known outdoor sculptures, Wall Installation #4 (1993), located in The Ohio State University’s 18th Avenue Library, perfectly encapsulates Chihuly’s vibrant and whimsical approach to the medium of blown glass.
Wall Installation #4 is composed of three glass pieces in vibrant shades of pink and blue, each measuring around three feet in diameter. Their shapes are irregular but decidedly organic, defined by undulating edges and uneven surfaces that appear to warp and bend as they radiate outward. The rightmost piece even seems to fold over on itself, lending a sense of softness and pliancy to the installation that contrasts with its medium's hard, brittle nature.
While more conventional glassblowers meticulously shape their work with a slate of specialized tools to achieve exact forms with almost perfect symmetry and even thickness throughout, Chihuly notes that he prefers to “[Let] glass be the guide.” Rather than striving for perfect control over his medium, he works with a gentle touch and allows gravity and centrifugal force to naturally shape the molten glass into a range of organic forms like those seen in Wall Installation #4.
Collection of The Ohio State University. Funded through the Ohio Percent for Art program.
Material
Glass
Location
Inside the 18th Ave Library
About the Artist
Few contemporary American artists are as prolific as Washington native Dale Chihuly, whose sculptures have been exhibited in galleries worldwide since the 1970s. He is one of many 20th-century artists who have worked to bring the so-called “decorative arts”— ceramics, metalwork, textiles and other forms that have utilitarian value rather than purely aesthetic merit — into the art gallery and museum.
While Chihuly and his team of highly trained assistants have created everything from small freestanding bowls and vases to massive outdoor installations, he is best known for his hanging sculptures composed of dozens, if not hundreds, of individually blown glass pieces attached to one another to create abstract organic forms. One of his works, Fiori di Como, installed in the Bellagio in Las Vegas, still holds the Guinness World Record for largest glass sculpture.
