The Supplement: Dale Chihuly

A number of you on CGAA are in the business of mixing your media in continuing quests for innovative art direction from which to derive distinctive cgi.  We've got students working with ink, with paint, with marbling, and with free-form expression inspired by music.  Sometimes, I detect a sense of inhibition - even nervousness - from students about accessing more expressive, more abstract, more 'arty' methodologies in relation to cg.  There is a fear perhaps of 'letting go' and of not being able to predict the outcome of your experiments - a need to control, as opposed to discover.  I suspect that sculptor Dale Chihuly knows no such fear - just check out his drawings below, inspirations for his breathtaking glass sculptures.  Feast your eyes on their energy and flourish - the sheer explosiveness of colour and line and texture! 

There is something wonderfully Willy Wonka about Chihuly's work.  His glass-blown rods, pods, and orbs are fantasias on the heaps of brightly-coloured boiled-sweets my grandmother used to keep in a bowl on her sideboard; or are they the flora and fauna of the sea-bed, or rogue vegetation grown from seeds blown here from James Cameron's Pandora?  I saw his stuff up close in the palm house at Kew Gardens a few years back - vivid glass tendrils snaking up out of the undergrowth and glowing jewel-like in the sun filtering from above.  Outside, more of Chihuly's work floated in the lake  like space-hoppers envisioned by Faberge.  Chihuly's work is a great example of how richly experimental drawing and mark-making can give rise to extraordinary 3D visions... Be inspired you lot - and be confident!