While visiting the Boston Museum of Fine Arts yesterday evening, Michelle and I experienced first hand the surreal glass sculptures designed by Dale Chihuly. I unknowingly shared a picture of Dale's work in 2009 while discussing Ruby and gems. That piece is at the Belagio in Las Vegas and is titled a Sea of Glass.
Dale rose to fame after a severe car accident left him challenged to work glass as effortlessly as he had once known. Unable to blow glass easily himself, he hired others to craft each piece. The act of stepping back from making each piece enabled Mr. Chihuly to design extraordinarily elaborate sculptures.
The supernatural shapes conjured by Chihuly's imagination immediately struck me as Lovecraftian in design. Tendrils swirling about base structures conjured images of the ancient alien gods hinted at in Call of Cthulhu. Several large floor displays, and in particular one tremendous garden piece are saturated with all the fantasy of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.
The images I captured fail to do the work justice, I highly recommend seeing Dale's work live. Fortunately he's done work world wide (see the link to his site below).
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