A Seattle Weekend
This weekend, Andrew and I bundled up and flew to the Pacific Northwest for a Seattle exploration. First stop: the Museum of Glass, not in Seattle but in Tacoma, an easy bus ride from the airport. Tacoma is Dale Chihuly’s birthplace, and the Museum of Glass is connected to the downtown area by the Bridge of Glass—not a bridge made out of glass, as Andrew and I mistakenly believed, but an otherwise ordinary bridge made less ordinary by the presence of several Chihuly glass artworks. Two teal-colored rock-candy-like sculptures flank the entrance to the bridge; on the bridge itself is a glass-walled series of shelves holding Chihuly vessels, and an overhead sea of glass creatures and shapes. The focal point of the museum itself is the Hot Shop, a working glass studio with stadium seating, where guest artists give glassmaking demonstrations. We were lucky to be there during Lino Tagliapietra’s residency—a glass artist from Venice—and we could have watched him all day. We watched him create...