I opt for the Audio Tour. What a silly experience. If you want to be taken by the hand and told what to think about works of art, you’ll love it.

Superstar glass object creator Dale Chihuly’s works are tangentially inspired. Natural elements repeat throughout his various explorations, as do different cultural forms (American Indian, Persian, Venetian, etc.).

Forest
Tall, glass tubes with flat, bulbous bottoms that lie along the floor like the exposed roots of the oaks in Golden Gate Park. The tubes are illuminated with lots of neon, and the whole thing lives in a dark, reflective box. Very Disney.

Venetians
Undeniably virtuosic, Deco/Baroque-inspired glasswork. Indisputably pretty, decorative, big, dramatic, and so exciting to the eyes. Bright, colorful, shiny things. Some of the pieces really look like huge replicas of the hand-blown glass bongs sported in head shops hither and yon.

Ikebana
After Japanese flower arrangements. Gosh! Glass can be made really big! And colorful?! Forget about it.

Persians
“Meant to evoke the sense of wonder…” According to the artist, these are conjured, romanticized ideas. Great, big, open morning glories in red, orange, and yellow.

Tabac Baskets
“The Indian Room,” inspired by North Coast Indian baskets. Seemingly lit from within, as usual, but much less predictable. Tabac is French for tobacco. The colors in this exhibit are a departure from Chihuly’s signature expanded primary color pallette. Here the colors are muted and earthy, sometimes smoky, sometimes clear. This is cool. One wall is Chihuly’s original glass-blown baskets scattered among his collection of Indian baskets. In the center of the room is a long, low, 700-year-old table cut in one massive swath from a single tree on which more than a hundred Tabac baskets laze like hot, desert rocks in the brilliant gallery light. On another wall are dozens of Pendleton blankets, more of Dale Chihuly’s own collection. Definitely an experience that gives me new insights about the nature of glass. My first experience with Chihuly’s work that I may be inclined to describe as “art.”

Macchia Forest
Macchia means “spotted” in Italian. These pieces are as colorful as anything I’ve seen in the phantasmagorical, wonderful world of Disney, the illuminated aquariums of Sea World. Huge decorations. Enormous coffee table dishes, all shined up and ready for party mix.

Reeds
I am enchanted, in spite of myself. Large birch logs, their white bark peeling and curling, exposing the dark underbelly. Magnificent, luminous, lavender spires, worthy of an inverted, stalactite cathedral rise from the exquisite birch bed. I cozy up as close as I can without stepping over the line that will cue the guard to move in my direction, and, for the life of me, I can’t identify any connection point between glass and log. It’s magical for a moment–that kind of delight overtakes me, the kind that I can only remember from taking Peter Pan’s Flight at Disneyland as a five-year-old. I know my mouth is hanging open in awe, but I am too caught up in the magic to care. I turn the corner and the light changes. Suddenly, I see the rods that rise halfway up each of the cylinders. Now the magical reeds are simply tubes of glass, predictably and unremarkably attached to birch logs. Peter Pan’s sparkling midnight sky suddenly becomes old Christmas lights attached to wires, exposed in the plain light of day. There I stand, Wendy, ever so much more than 20. Dorothy, after Toto has pulled the curtain away and exposed the icky little man in the sleazy little booth.

Dejected, I move on to the Seventh Gallery:

Boats
Two antique, wooden boats from Chihuly’s personal collection, filled with big, shiny objects. One filled with large, bright spheres of colorful glass, inspired by the marbles Chihuly played with as a child. The other boat filled with floral elements, very pretty, compositionally impeccable, perfect for a Donald Trump lobby.

Chandeliers
Enormous, Venetian, Baroque-inspired, upside-down Christmas trees, huge ornaments dangling from the ceiling, the light dancing through their mono-chromaticism like a streetlamp through a rooftop ice sculpture. The interpretation on the wall proudly declares, “On a fundamental level, Chihuly is a performance artist whose installations function not just as set pieces, but as sets–theatrical stages upon which he, his works, and their audience are all protagonists.”

Black
New drawings/acrylics that inspire the glass pieces created by Chihuly’s artisan crew. Blanket cylinders inspired by Pueblo pottery. Impressive, decorative, pretty, dramatic stuff.

Persian Ceiling
“Evokes the magical feeling of floating under water.” 1,000 small to middling sized glass pieces lying on a plate of safety glass with light pouring through from above. Neat-o. Would make a nice café ceiling. Patrons sit around on benches discussing the extreme prettiness of it all.

Mille Fiori Garden
One of Chihuly’s many botanical garden installations, apparently inspired by his mother’s passion for flower cultivation. Sweet, gorgeous, beautiful, huge, fantastical eye candy. In that oversized, brightly lit, colorful floral forest, I feel like Alice In Wonderland, without the stress.

Finally, the gift shop. I eschew the fleeting notion of buying some of the mini versions of his works–complete with ribbons looped through glass grommets and tied to create perfect little Christmas ornaments. Too early in the season, I decide. I buy a Chihuly Art Kit for my grandson and have it shipped directly to him. Extra weight on airplanes costs real money nowadays. The transaction goes as smooth as glass.

I walk outside and call a cab, grateful to be breathing the fresh, Bay breeze and heading toward a bottle of single malt scotch and this laptop.

Salud.

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