Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/299622
ere's a profound dichotomy at play: past and pres- ent, rough and sleek, tarnish and shine. I gaze up at the 2,364 organic glass shapes in Chihuly's dream-like Sea- form Pavilion on the Bridge of Glass, suspended as if a swarm of translucent jellyfish is lit through by sun- beams. Ahead is shimmering Commencement Bay and Puget Sound; below is the dull buzz of a traffic-filled thoroughfare we cross over as if in another dimension. Here, grit and gleam co-exist. When Andy Warhol said, "Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it," he might as well have been talking about Tacoma. e native son of another indus- trial city, Pittsburgh, Warhol put in a bold bid for a big bloom to swathe the iconic Tacoma Dome (looming large across the ea Foss Waterway from our vantage point on the Bridge of Glass). But floral didn't make the cut in this working-class town in 1982. Warhol's timing was off. ree decades later, the Tacoma Art Museum's Flowers for Tacoma exhibit celebrated these same bright blooms and sparked a campaign to realize his vision: Citizens to Install Andy War- hol's Flower on Tacoma Dome. The town, it seems, has done a 180-degree turn as colossal as the dome itself. Tacoma is now known more as the hometown of Dale Chihuly, the world-renowned guru of glass whose fame has helped bolster the city's rep. Artist types have replaced the railroad workers and longshoremen of the last century. At Tacoma Glassblowing Studio, the young man instructing me on how to shape molten glass loves working with his hands – literally. He doesn't wear the bulky pro- tective leather gloves I have on, saying his hands are like asbestos. He's being cheeky, of course, but there's a sense of pride in the tough side of this creative work. His calluses are hide-like, but he's able to shape a delicate horse out of mol- ten glass in mere minutes. He learned the craft at Tacoma's Wilson High School (thanks to a special program supported by Chihuly at his alma mater). After stum- bling upon the school's hot shop while skipping class, he thought, "Cool. What's this?" and enrolled in Glass Design. Today, he credits glassblowing with keeping him in school and calls himself a craftsman, eschewing the title of artist. Whatever the label (glassblower, foundry A glassblowing teacher shapes a horse out of molten glass; (right) intricate glass creations of Chihuly's Venetian Wall, en route to the Museum of Glass. (both pages) barb sligl p42-47Tacoma.indd 44 14-04-10 2:28 PM