Culture Fiend

First Look: Chihuly Garden and Glass

Sneak a peek at the largest collection of Dale Chihuly’s glasswork in the world. No touching!

Posted by: Laura Dannen on May 16, 2012 at 01:00PM 0 Comments

All photos by Laura Dannen.

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All photos by Laura Dannen.

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The money shot—inside the Glasshouse.

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Glass Forest

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Persian Ceiling

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Up close: Persian Ceiling.

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Mille Fiori

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From left: Nijima Floats and Ikebana Boat.

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Macchia Forest

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In the Chihuly Garden

Following a class of grammar school children through a building full of (very breakable) glass art was a great way to spend my Wednesday morning. It was just too funny. The teachers were, to put it mildly, terrified; they circled the kids like riot police waiting for the first bottle to be thrown. But credit the students for being on their best behavior. They knew the drill: No touching. No running. No shoving. And the adults weren’t off the hook: No food, drinks, or giant purses for you, ma’am. Just look at the 15-foot Sealife Tower and name the sea creatures in the installation, please.

So went my walkthrough of the new Chihuly Garden and Glass at Seattle Center, the multimillion-dollar, 1.5-acre exhibition of Dale Chihuly’s glasswork that officially opens May 21. Not everyone’s pleased that this prime public space went to a private gallery, and truth be told, it’d be easy to breeze through the building in 15 minutes and come out the other side wondering where your $15 bucks went. Seattleites have grown so accustomed to seeing “Chihulys” around town— Macchias on tables in Mercer Island homes, or sets for Bluebeard’s Castle at Benaroya Hall—that we might dismiss what’s familiar.

That’s why I’m glad I tailed the schoolkids. It forced me to take more time in each room and appreciate the attention to detail: how Chihuly figured out a way to thread colors of molten glass like one might weave a basket or blanket, or how swans and dolphins appear subtly in his Chandeliers. Most impressive is his newest (and largest) creation, the 1,400-odd individual Persians that comprise the Glasshouse installation (see above). The airy greenhouse space—with a prime view of the Space Needle—is a bright, welcoming spot that opens onto a plaza and outdoor garden of Mille Fiori. It’s a glass Eden both inside and out.

Despite the nine galleries offering a retrospective of Chihuly’s career, and a theater with short videos on loop showing the artist’s process, I found myself wishing for more—more to read about each piece, or video panels in each room showing the making of the art. I wanted an education in glassblowing; instead, I spent a morning with students in Chihuly 101.

View the slideshow for a preview of the Chihuly Garden and Glass.

Chihuly Garden and Glass
Opens May 21 at Seattle Center
Mon–Thu 11–8, Fri–Sun 10–9, $12–$19

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Tags: exhibit, Seattle Center, Chihuly, First Look, Spring Arts 2012

Giant King Tut Statue Arrives at King Street Station

Make way for the seven-ton god of the afterlife.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on May 15, 2012 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

Photos by me.

Anubis will not carry your bags out of the station.

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Photos by me.

Anubis will not carry your bags out of the station.

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Meet Anubis, a 26-foot-tall, seven-ton, jackal-headed guardian of the afterlife who moonlights as an escort for King Tut. As of 10 this morning, the traveling statue was parked outside King Street Station in downtown Seattle, and heralds the coming of the much-anticipated Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs exhibit, which opens May 24 at Pacific Science Center. Consider this King Tut’s farewell tour: The modern incarnation of the 1970s exhibit (now with twice as many artifacts) will return to Egypt for good after its Seattle stay. Anubis will be in place through August—if you’re lost, head to “King Tut Street Station.” There’s a soon-to-be glowing sign; you can’t miss it.

Read more about the King Tut exhibit in our Spring Arts Preview.

Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs
May 24–Jan 6, Pacific Science Center, $16–$33

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Tags: exhibit, Seattle Center, Pacific Science Center, Spring Arts 2012, King Tut

New AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix Exhibits to Open at Experience Music Project

Plus: Learn the history of the leather jacket.

Posted by: Brian Colella on Jan 24, 2012 at 09:45AM 1 Comments

Photo courtesy: VARA (Beeld en Geluidwiki – Gallery: Fanclub), via Wikimedia Commons

See EMP’s new collection of Hendrix memorabilia, courtesy of the estate of Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell.

EMP released a schedule of four new exhibitions slated for 2012, including a collection of Jimi Hendrix paraphernalia focusing on the artist’s time in London, where the Jimi Hendrix Experience was born and where Hendrix died in 1970. Among the items: previously unseen artifacts from drummer Mitch Mitchell’s estate.

Here’s the full lineup:

AC/DC: Australia’s Family Jewels
Apr 28–Sep 24, 2012
The touring exhibit makes its only stop in North America, presenting more than 400 items—including guitars, promotional posters, Angus Young’s schoolboy costume, and Bon Scott’s Highway to Hell sweatshirt—from the Aussie band’s nearly four decades in rock and roll.

Icons of Science Fiction
June 9–Ongoing
Coinciding with the reopening of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, EMP hosts some of sci-fi’s best known props and costumes from film and TV: an Imperial Dalek from Doctor Who, Captain Kirk’s chair, and Yoda’s cane, among others.

Worn to be Wild: The Black Leather Jacket
Oct 20, 2012–Jan 20, 2013
Follow the leather jacket as it transcends its utilitarian beginnings and becomes an emblem of badassness. The leather on display includes outfits belonging to Elvis, and couture by Jean Paul Gaultier and Gianni Versace.

Hear My Train a Comin’: Hendrix Hits London
Nov 17, 2012–Ongoing
The home of the world’s largest Hendrix collection celebrates what would have been the guitarist’s 70th birthday, and the 45th anniversary of the infamous performance at the Monterey Pop Festival that ended with Hendrix igniting his guitar and smashing it to bits.

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Tags: exhibit, Seattle Center, Jimi Hendrix, Experience Music Project

Slideshow: EMP’s ‘The Lure of Horror Film’

The most frightening thing is the unknown.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Oct 03, 2011 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

All photos by Lucas Anderson.

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All photos by Lucas Anderson.

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No one jumps out at you, but this exhibit has film clips and some gruesome masks that aren’t for kids. Or wussy adults like our arts editor.

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Before the exhibit opened, EMP collected as many screams as it could to line the wall leading up to the entrance to Can’t Look Away.

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Directors Roger Corman, John Landis, and Eli Roth curated a list of 100 Horror Films to See Before You Die. I love that Bride of Frankenstein is on there.

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In a soundproof booth, visitors watch a clip from a horror movie and are prompted to scream on cue.

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An installation by artist Philip Worthington turns visitors into shadow monsters, complete with tentacles, fangs, and claws.

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The exhibit features lots of iconic horror movie props, including Jason’s hockey mask from the Friday the 13th film series.

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Don’t worry: The alien from Alien is behind glass.

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Classic horror films are projected from the ceiling into a pit as you enter the exhibit.

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On display: Edward Scissorhands’s…scissor hands.

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We wouldn’t set foot in this screening room, but we took a peek. You can also watch clips and video discussions on Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Les Diaboliques (1955), Psycho (1960), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Suspiria (1977), and Evil Dead II (1987), among other horror classics.

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For opening night, the exhibit featured local makeup artists “zombifying” museum-goers.

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The making of a zombie.

As you approach EMP’s new exhibit, Can’t Look Away: The Lure of Horror Film, you feel like you’re descending into the bowels of hell. The staircase spirals down to the basement, with photographs of people mid-scream lining the walls like they’re hell’s denizens, frozen for eternity. You almost expect a guy in devil horns to greet you at the double doors, but let’s not forget this is an EMP exhibit. It’s an understated, academic approach to horror that opens with the philosophical question “What Is Horror, and Why Do We Like It?” emblazoned on the wall.

Because it deals with taboo subjects?
Tests our courage?
Reflects the landscape of nightmares and dreams?

Or is it just the rush? “Guillermo del Toro calls it a roller-coaster ride for the soul,” director John Landis (of Blues Brothers and American Werewolf in London fame) said during a Q&A at EMP yesterday. “I don’t know what that means, but I like how it sounds.” Other nuggets from Landis: “Monster lore was mostly created by screenwriters.” “I don’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural—but The Exorcist scared the shit out of me.” “The last true grindhouse movie was Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.”

Landis, along with Hollywood fright flick mavens Roger Corman (Little Shop of Horrors) and Eli Roth (_Hostel_), curated clips from their favorite horror films to screen inside cleverly constructed viewing rooms that look like creepy forest groves. If you, like me, wouldn’t set foot in the Ringu/The Exorcist room, check out the original typed manuscript of Bram Stoker’s Dracula instead, complete with a handwritten cover page with the original title The Un-Dead.

Also on display: a series of props from classic horror films, including the alien in Alien, Freddy Krueger’s glove from Nightmare on Elm Street, and the “Gill man” mask from Creature from the Black Lagoon.

This isn’t a haunted house with teenagers hired part-time to jump out at you wearing Jason’s hockey mask, but the exhibit is plenty eerie, especially if you let your imagination run a little wild. View the slideshow for more. (Warning: It’s rated PG-13.)

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Tags: exhibit, Experience Music Project

Slideshow: Avatar: The Exhibition at EMP

James Cameron brings us his own blue man group.

Posted by: Allyson Marrs on Jun 08, 2011 at 01:00PM 0 Comments

Before touching the computer or a camera, Cameron and his artistic team created casts of each blue avatar. “He didn’t settle for mediocrity,” says Giovanni Ribisi, who plays Parker Selfridg in the film.


All photos by Lucas Anderson

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Before touching the computer or a camera, Cameron and his artistic team created casts of each blue avatar. “He didn’t settle for mediocrity,” says Giovanni Ribisi, who plays Parker Selfridg in the film.


All photos by Lucas Anderson

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It took a full year to put the exhibit together after James Cameron approached EMP’s Paul Allen about it. Curator Brooks Peck says there are two main themes to the exhibit: world building and imagination, and invention and filmmaking.

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The designers of Avatar had strong scientific backgrounds, evident in their creations. Exhibition visitors get the chance to see props from the movie, like the chest garments worn by CCH Pounder (Mo’at) shown here.

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Step into the shoes of the massive blue avatars by comparing the size your feet, hands, and height to theirs. The avatars tower at 9’ 7’’ and wear a whopping size 17.5 shoe.

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Learn to speak Na’vi by choosing from a slew of popular phrases. The best part: It’s a real language, specially created by a linguist for the creatures of eywa’eveng (the Na’vi name for Pandora).

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An interactive concept board allows users to choose from plants, creatures, and other objects from the film, then get a detailed account of the creation process. The board took five years to construct and uses sophisticated technology: Users place a tablet on the screen, turning and touching to their liking, watching the film element evolve from inception to final product. Those who’ve seen Avatar will recognize that it’s strikingly similar to the technology used by characters in the film.

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The exhibit allows visitors to direct and shoot their own Avatar scene using “virtual cameras,” equipment similar to what was on the original set. These handy little cameras shoot from any point of view you choose and move as you move. Action!

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The Performance Capture Stage lets you do the acting in one of two scenes, becoming either Neytiri or Jake Sully. A virtual Cameron directs you through the scene while you watch your own avatar image stroll on the screen. These fourteen cameras create the same digital world they did in the movie. Bonus: You can send the link of your Oscar-worthy performance to friends and family.

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During the Actors’ Experience panel, Avatar cast members shared lighthearted stories about their time on set. Veteran actress CCH Pounder, who plays Mo’at, greeted her costar Giovanni Ribisi with a hiss. Pounder describes how the film forced her back to her childhood imagination, having to believe that the set, a gray hanger-like building, was the world of Pandora.

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Actor Laz Alonso, who played Tsu’tey in the film, talks about some of the challenges during filming: “[ Cameron] had to start creating a new word, like, every week for ‘action.’ The horses would learn what ‘action’ meant, [so] when he’d go ‘Annnd’, the horses would just start running!”

“I feel like actors do the same thing,” commented Giovanni Ribisi with a roar from the audience, one of many jokes that passed between the two men.

James Cameron doesn’t do anything halfheartedly. His partnership with the Experience Music Project is Avatar: The Exhibition, a show that will stun even the most diehard fans of the 2009 blockbuster. Consisting of props, technology, and sketchbooks from the film, the exhibit is designed to give you a full Pandora education.

During last weekend’s series of events, from star-studded panels to a “blue” carpet entrance, viewers got a look at how the movie magic was made. The exhibit “amplifies creative contemporary culture,” says EMP’s curator Brooks Peck. Avatar fans not only have the opportunity to explore the world of Pandora, but they get the chance to create it, and, quite literally, step into it. Attendees are flocked by forest creatures even before entering: Outside the doors, digital projections of woodsprites—Pandora’s friendly jellyfish-like beings—swarm your shadow. For these kind of interactive displays, EMP enlisted the help of the folks who did the digital renderings for the movie.

James Cameron chose Seattle specifically for EMP, saying in a blue-carpet interview, “There isn’t a better venue in the world.” He describes the exhibit as both educational and experimental, and promises that it’s as authentic as he could make it. “In our minds, [Pandora] was a real world,” he says.

Take a look at our slideshow above to see blue Na’vi models, props from the film, and the interactive experiences that make up the show.

Avatar: The Exhibition is on display through September 3, 2012.

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Tags: Visual Art, exhibit, Experience Music Project

Last Week to See Star Wars Exhibit

We all need a little Wookiee in our lives.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on May 03, 2011 at 03:00PM 0 Comments

Have you hugged your Chewbacca today?

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Have you hugged your Chewbacca today?

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First thing you see when you walk into the Star Wars exhibit: Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, which helped him get around Tatooine and pick up chicks. The full-scale prop was actually a working car with wheels hidden beneath its frame.

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Fun facts: Star Wars artist Ralph McQuarrie got his inspiration for C-3PO (“Threepio,” far right) from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. And R2-D2 (center) was created using a combination of remote control units and a standing unit, with actor Kenny Baker inside the standing unit. Baker gave R2-D2 some personality.

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A picture of Albert Einstein was on the wall behind the Yoda sculptures during development, and the wrinkles around Einstein’s eyes got worked into the Yoda design.

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Models of the M400 Skycar (center) and Virgin Galactic spaceship (right).

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a bit of a nerd—which means I’ll willingly spend a Saturday afternoon at a Harry Potter or Star Wars exhibit. Do you know how many kids there are at Pacific Science Center on a Saturday afternoon, by the way? You’d think they were promising free monkeys with admission. But I braved it to catch Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination in its final week.

Admittedly, this traveling exhibit of movie props and costumes, straight from the George Lucas vault, is best for uber-fans and tykes. There are lots of model starships behind glass; games to play if you like magnets and you’re three feet tall; and Wookiees. Many Wookiees. But it’s the stories behind the making of Chewbacca, Yoda, R2-D2, C-3PO and gang that excited this nerd more than anything else. Wonder how Lucas came up with a furry, 7’3" sidekick for Han Solo? He’ll tell you: “My dog Indiana used to ride on the front seat of my car. He was a big dog, and when he sat there, he was bigger than a person, so I had this image in my mind of this huge, furry animal riding with me. That’s where the inspiration for Chewbacca came from.”

Satisfying, eh? There’s more where that came from—view the slideshow for additional backstory on Star Wars, and some terrible photos I took with my phone. You might also be interested in the real-life technology on display alongside the Millennium Falcon: models of Virgin Galactic’s commercial spaceship, or the Moller M400X Skycar, a next-gen aircraft meant to replace the car. It can go 375 mph and gets 20 miles to the gallon—or 750 miles per tank. If only we could all drive to work in Skycars and landspeeders…

Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination is at Pacific Science Center through May 8. May 4 is ‘Star Wars Day’; guests who come in costume get $2 off admission. Hours are extended Wednesday through Friday, 10am–10pm, and then around-the-clock from 10am Saturday till the final close at 10pm Sunday.

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Tags: exhibit, Seattle Center, Pacific Science Center, Star Wars

Sometimes a Seawall Isn’t Just a Seawall

Message meets models in an eye-opening installation at the aquarium

Posted by: Eric Scigliano on Oct 20, 2010 at 07:00AM 0 Comments

Here’s how Sydney did it.
Courtesy Cristina Bump

Usually when we talk about Seattle’s downtown seawall we lament how it’s crumbling and threatening to plunge the waterfront, the viaduct, and all the utilities running alongside into disaster. And how Mayor McGinn’s been pushing a bond issue to rebuild it, but everyone thinks he’s trying to end-run the waterfront tunnel so nothing gets done.

Rookie architectural designer Cristina Bump set aside these debates and asked some other questions: Just what kind of seawall should it be, and how should it fit into the marine shore environment? These questions came naturally: Mithún, the architectural firm where she works, sits on a historic waterfront pier. She got an American Institute of Architects travel fellowship and headed off to Vancouver, Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne to see what they’d done with their seawalls. Now she’s showing the results in Smart Seawalls, a little exhibit at the Seattle Aquarium that’s both beguiling and enlightening—with an opening reception this Thursday.

Here’s what Cristina bumped into in her travels: Sydney cut the cost of rebuilding its crumbling seawall 50 to 75 percent by squirting cement grout behind the existing sandstone—a trick that might not work in Seattle, but ought to be considered. It created new marine habitat—vertical tidepools—by adding niches, reef balls, and concrete extrusions, plus boulders in front to cushion the waves. Brisbane has no such smart seawall, but it’s kept a mangrove margin and managed to connect pedestrians to shoreline parks despite what looks like even thicker waterfront traffic than Seattle’s. And so on….

All these findings are clearly presented with the usual photos and wallboards (thought hey could use a little proofreading). But the treat is the old-fashioned three-dimensional, cross-sectional models Bump made of the seawalls she studied. Alas, the aquarium’s hung them by the play area near the Hawai’ian fish tanks, and the kids pull off pieces faster than she can refabricate them. So make allowances and check it out at the Thursday opening, 6:30-8:30pm (RSVP to r.crowley@seattleaquarium.org) or in the coming weeks.

Bump’s installation will remain up indefinitely. And she may not be over seawalls yet. Mithún’s been picked to work with the renowned New York landscape architect James Corner, who will design a new waterfront for Seattle.

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Tags: exhibit, Aquarium, Waterfront