30 Dale Chihuly Quotes About Art & Life

Dale Chihuly (born on September 20, 1941, in Tacoma, Washington) is an American entrepreneur and glass sculptor who is best known for his marvelous and unique works with glass.

He studied interior design at the University of Washington in Seattle and received an M.S. in sculpture from the University of Wisconsin. In 1968, Dale earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the RISD.

In 1976, a car accident left Dale blind in one eye. After, Chihuly was dependent on assistants to produce his glass designs. When asked about his role at that time, Chihuly described it as:

“more choreographer than dancer, more supervisor than participant, more director than actor.”

List Of 30 Dale Chihuly Quotes:

#1 “Just waking up in the morning brings forth a lot of ideas.”

#2 ”Surround yourself with artists and see as much art as possible. Go with your gut and create something that nobody has ever seen before.”

#3 “If you’re going to make glass, you really have to be a team person.”

#4 “People respond to things in a different way. If you could record what people were thinking, there would be a tremendous variation.”

#5 ”I was studying interior architecture, and playing around with glass because I really liked glass. There was one night when I blew a bubble and put a pipe into this glass I had melted and blew a bubble. From that moment, I wanted to be a glassblower.”

#6 “My philosophy is: when one is good, a dozen is better.”

#7 ”As a parent and an artist, I’m especially looking forward to leaving a legacy at The Children’s Museum, a place where I hope my work brings joy to children who visit from all over the world.”

#8 ”My hope with my artwork and exhibitions around the world is that people have the opportunity to experience and enjoy them.”

#9 ”Many things inspire me including architecture, nature, cars, great films, beautiful objects, and books.”

#10 “I tend to do things on a huge scale because it’s exciting. I like to push things in new and different ways.”

#11 ”If you work with hot glass and its natural properties, it begins to look like something that came from the sea.”

#12 ”Glass is the most magical of all materials. It transmits light in a special way…I’m pleased that my art appeals to so many people of all ages.”

READ MORE: 51 Monday Motivation Quotes

#13 “I don’t know if something can be too colorful. Color is one of the great properties of glass and is more intense in glass than any other material. Imagine entering Chartres Cathedral and looking up at the rose window: you can see a one-inch square of ruby red glass from 300 feet away.”

#14 ”Most of the drawings are quite spontaneous. I don’t do much with preconceived ideas.”

#15 ”I’m an artist, a designer, a craftsman, interior designer, half-architect. There’s no one name that fits me very well.”

#16 “Just working with the material brings forth a lot of ideas, in both the glass blowing and in working with the glass after it’s been blown.”

#17 ”I’ve never attempted anything I couldn’t pull off that was an actual commission. But I’ve attempted things that I couldn’t pull off that I did on my own.”

#18 ”I’ve always tried to push the medium as far as I could in terms of shape and scale. It is a challenge to see how big we can blow and stretch the material.”

#19 ”I can’t understand it when people say they don’t like a particular color. . . . How on earth can you not like a color?”

#20 ”I work from my gut. I just work, and out it comes. I don’t know what it is until it’s finished, and I often title a piece after it’s done.”

#21 ”I feel fortunate to work with a very skilled and talented team of glassblowers, especially now that I do such large architectural projects and installations.”

#22 ”I never met a color I didn’t like.”

READ MORE: Ip Man Quotes

#23 ”I think most people are attracted to glass. If not the glass, the form, or the color, or something. From what I remember, for me, it was the love of glass.”

#24 ”I want people to be overwhelmed with light and color in a way they have never experienced.”

#25 ”As a kid, I was always interested in glass, but it wasn’t until I had to take a weaving class at the University of Washington in the early 1960s that I made my first artistic use of it—I started weaving small pieces of glass into tapestries.”

#26 ”My first year in architecture at the UW was pretty hard. I didn’t feel overly talented, and I also didn’t work very hard at my studies because I became the rush chairman of my fraternity, which meant I had to work at getting other people in.”

#27 ”I’m always creating or thinking about what I want to create. I respond to inspiration as it comes and, fortunately for me, I am inspired by many things.”

#28 ”I don’t use a lot of tools. Just human breath, centrifugal force, gravity, and fire to make the glass.”

#29 ”Somebody once said people become artists because they have a certain kind of energy to release. That rings true to me. It must have an outlet. That’s why I draw.”

#30 ”Glass is the most magical of all materials. It transmits light in a special way.”

Images credit – Getty Images

READ THIS NEXT: Quotes About Serenity