Pilchuck Glass School: A Hot August Afternoon

PilchuckGlass School: A Hot August Afternoon

The Pilchuck Glass School is a summer-time academy begun by Dale Chihuly and some friends. Glass artists from around the world go to learn from teachers and each other and share what they know about all forms of art made from glass.

People who donate to the school are invited each summer to purchase tickets to feast on a gourmet salad and sandwich buffet and tour the work being produced by the students. Several years ago, one of my co-workers bought tickets to the event and then suddenly a spot in an Egyptian pyramids tour opened up so she was forced to sell her Pilchuck tickets (after seeing her trip pictures, I think we got the better deal).

I snapped them up on a whim and that was how my Sensational Son and I found ourselves on an extremely hot August afternoon driving along a desolate road near the remote town of Stanwood northwest of Seattle, Washington. The road went on forever and eventually came to a dead end at a gate guarded by a young man. We entered after flashing our ticket and found ourselves in a rutted cow pasture filled with so many cars it rivaled the Kingdome (which I think was still standing at the time) parking lot. We began to wonder what we'd gotten ourselves into and how we'd get back out. It appeared that many of the other ticket-holders had been eager to get in ahead of us and were there the second the gate opened.

The Sensational Son and I traipsed through the field and finally arrived at a lodge filled with a crowd of enthusiastic arts supporters. There was an enormous buffet of delicious salads and sandwiches and we ate quickly while standing so that we could get back outside to see the art. The picture at the top of this page shows that the lodge was above the tide flats of Puget Sound. The view was amazing; there was just the faintest sound and smell of the water and it was a strange counterpoint to the fetid steaming cow pasture in which we'd just parked.

The Print Shop

 The first stop we made was in a room on the ground floor of the lodge. Very few other patrons had noticed it and it was nice to be with only a few people after the crushing crowd and din of the dining room above.

 There was a lone artist showing us how he painted images onto a glass plate, laid a sheet of paper on the glass and then covered it with layers of cloth and paper before strapping it down and running it through a press. He then undid the bundle, painted another image on the glass, ran the print through again, and continued this until a completed picture emerged. He allowed me to photograph him in this very taxing process and we hung on his every word and sweat inducing movement.

The Finished Prints

The artist's prints were fabulous and he'd tacked a series of them onto the wall above us. He saw me struggling to get the right perspective since the prints were fairly high up and I am quite short. He eventually grabbed up my camera, hopped onto a tall stool and took the shot himself for which I was very grateful.

Hidden Gems  

As we exited the lodge, the Sensational Son and I found that there were pieces of glass art hanging in the trees, floating in the pond, and stuck into odd spots all around the grounds. These pieces are a little difficult to see in the photo, but they are made from pieces of rusty, woven iron grating welded into interesting cages with orangish red glass pieces hanging inside of them. They almost looked like torches with flames.

It became a bit of a game for the Sensational Son and I to see where we could find another twisted bit of glass emerging like a flower from the ground or clanking with other bits of glass like a wind chime under the tent top of a pavilion.

The Cold Shop

I was hopeful that this building would actually be cool in the overwhelming heat, but alas it was just a description of working with glass that was no longer in a molten state. We wandered from workstation to workstation looking at fantastical pieces fashioned from bits of glass.

The artists had left the room in its normal state as it was in the creative process with finished pieces mixed in with garbage strewn haphazardly about. It felt very odd to see that this artist seemed to be drawing inspiration for her glass bugs from a tome on the saints.  

The Hot Shops   

Thankfully, the hot shops were in an outdoor setting-in buildings that could be opened up to the fresh air on all sides. This artist had grabbed up a glob of glass from a furnace in order to work with it on a blow pipe with assistance from his fellow artists. It was interesting to learn that to be a blown glass artist meant never working alone, but working as part of a well choreographed team. It simply can't be done without the help of at least one other person, if not four or more other trained artists or the piece could end up in shards on the refuse heap.

After he got the glob of molten glass onto his pipe and blew it into a bubble, he began to form it by rolling it on a steel table, having his assistant shape it with wooden paddles, by letting gravity pull it downward, by rolling it in bits of colored glass, and by having an assistant heat it with a blow torch. When he needed to, he would thrust it back into the furnace to get the temperature back up. It was already a very hot day and we only had to be within twenty feet of the hot shop furnaces to feel the blasting heat nearly knock us over.

Hot Shops Part Deux

This hot shop was totally different from the preceding in that all of the glass used here was made from recycled glass. It came from glass swept up from traffic accidents, returned glass bottles, old commercial signs and windows, and anywhere else they could get their hands on it. We found that glass is quite expensive and in order to keep costs down the storage bins were filled with every imaginable kind of reclaimed glass and melted together in the furnace.

These art pieces were made by filling troughs with freshly screened sand that was then filled with extremely hot water. The artist then pushed items into the hot, wet sand to create interesting depressions. While the sand was still amazingly hot, the artist spooned up molten recycled glass and poured it into the holes in the sand. I'm sorry that these photos are at such a distance, but was as close as they allowed us to get so that we wouldn't get burned if there was an explosion of glass which could happen if the temperature of the sand cooled off too quickly before the pouring took place. After the glass cooled a bit, it was picked up on a large spatula and placed in an annealing oven to cool over several days.

Sensational Son's Turn

The next year, our Sensational Son enrolled in an arts magnet high school, which is only one of a handful of high schools in the nation with a hot shop for glass blowing. Because of our trip to Pilchuck, he decided to enroll in Hot Glass. Sensational Son found out how very difficult it is to incorporate the colored glass bits (flit) in with the molten glass, how hard it is to blow a glass bubble, and how essential teamwork is to the project. Here are some of his triumphs. A significant amount of glass went directly into a refuse bin.

While he was in the Hot Glass shop, we experienced an earthquake in the area. The class all paid attention and followed the teacher's directions. Quite a number of glass pieces fell from shelves, but none of the students were injured. Thankfully, the annealing ovens were off at the time so there was minimal chance for a gas line rupture.