Although this year’s official last day of summer isn’t until Sept. 23, it sure feels like summer is over once we enter the ninth month of the year.

But the arrival of fall doesn’t mean that the party has to end. It just means the party might move indoors.

Before we kiss summer goodbye, here’s a list of some interesting lineup of events happening this week in Denver: a food and wine festival, live music in Sunnyside, a ladies’ night R&B festival, a chile fest in Westwood, and a celebration of Indigenous communities at the Denver Art Museum.

2023 Denver Food + Wine Festival

Date: Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 6-9
Location: Tivoli Quad, Auraria Campus, 1000 Larimer St.

Presented by the Colorado Restaurant Association and Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits the festival will be a multi-day event of food, wine and spirits showcasing the Mile High restaurant community.

Two Riedel Wine Glass Seminars will be held on Sept. 6 and 7 starting at 6 p.m. where attendees can get a firsthand experience on how the shape of a wine glass affects unique varietals.

On Thursday, Sept. 7 from 7 to 10 p.m., the Shake + Brake Showdown is a lively cocktail and food truck competition during which either local food trucks and 12 pro bartenders will compete for the title of “Best Food Truck” and “Best Cocktail.”

On Saturday, Sept. 9 from noon to 4 p.m., the Grand Tasting will showcase local award-winning chefs, mixologists and wine professionals who will share food endless bites and more than 700 wines and spirits.

Click here for tickets and the full restaurant lineup.

R&B Jam Fest, Ladies Night Edition

Date: Thursday, Sept. 7, 8 p.m. – 12 a.m.
Location: Your Mom’s House, 608 E. 13th Ave.

If you miss the golden era of 90s R&B, this could be the event for you. Coming back for the fifth volume in a series of R&B music festivals presented by Picasso Gang and Boogie Groove Entertainment, the showcase is keen on highlighting Denver’s R&B talent.

This ladies’ night edition will feature seven local R&B acts including Danae Simone, Cleopatra, Cameron Cade, Xandra Day, DSCRND, Home, Renee and music provided by Guyanese-American DJ MnM.

Click here for a playlist of R&B Jam Fest past and future performers and click here for tickets.

Sunnyside Music Festival

Date: Saturday, Sept. 9, noon to 7:30 p.m.
Location: Chaffee Park, 1901 W. 43rd Ave.

This free, family-friendly event is focused on Colorado musicians, craft beer, cocktails, artisan vendors and the Sunnyside community. The volunteer-run nonprofit is going into its 21st year hosting the festival.

This year the festival will be headlined by Extra Gold, Mono Verde, Lazy Summer Home, Buffalo Commons, and a Colorado Blue Revue featuring The Delta Sonics, Lionel Young, Erica Brown, Jack Hadley and Ken Saydak.

Click here for more information on road closures and safe routes to the festival.

Westwood Chile Fest

Date: Saturday, Sept. 9, noon to 7 p.m.
Location: 3738 Morrison Road

This year’s festival returns to celebrate “business and culture” on Morrison Road, the heart of the Westwood community. What originally began as a small community potluck has evolved into a full-fledged street festival with vendors, food trucks, community organizations, live art installations and live music celebrating Hispanic culture and cuisine.

The event is free and open to the public. It will include entertainment for all ages including a new Salsa de Westwood Competition in partnership with Hecho en Westwood, the longstanding tradition of a Chile Pepper-Eating contest and more than 60 artists and vendors.

Click here for more information and the schedule of live performances.

34th Annual Friendship Powwow at the Denver Art Museum

Date: Saturday, Sept. 9, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Location: 100 W. 14th Ave. Pkwy.

As one of the Denver Art Museum’s long-running events, the Friendship Powwow will feature Native American dance competitions, hands-on activities for the whole family, artist, food and vendor booths all in celebration of Indigenous communities across Denver and the Front Range.

There will also be beadwork artmaking activities with local Native artists Katherine Flecking and Chelsea Kaiah, one of the DAM’s former Artists in Residence.

This Saturday is a Free Day at the DAM meaning general admission is free of charge for all visitors.

Click here for more information on the event.

The Illinois State University Horticulture Center is going back to “native roots” for this year’s Autumnal Festival, literally.

The center on Raab Road in Normal is honoring the connection to indigenous plants as part of the annual fundraiser for the center, Saturday and Sunday.

Matt Horton is the executive chef for ISU’s food service and dining program, which will be serving Native American cuisine. It’s not just “cuisine” — the word should be plural, Horton said, because there are many Native American groups and lifeways. Native Americans of the plains ate differently that did Woodland tribes, or west or east coast nations.

“It’d be a lot like saying, Mexican food, or Chinese food, or Indian food represents an entire continent. There’s a lot more to any kind of cuisine when you’re talking about thousands of different cultures over thousands of years,” said Horton.

Horton said they will start Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. with foods common to tribes in the upper Midwest, including a wild rice pilaf.

“Most people think wild rice is the same thing you might find with Ben’s original box mix, but they’re actually quite quite different. Authentic wild rice is not a rice, it’s a grass. The habitat where it’s grown is small, parts of northern Minnesota and just a little bit in California. That’s about it,” said Horton.

It cooks a lot faster than a lot of other rice, about 15 minutes. Horton said he’s borrowing recipes from the “Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen” by Sean Sherman. Chestnuts and several kinds of mushrooms will also be in the pilaf. Those were more available to Woodland tribes, though are hard to find after an invasive species of fungus killed most American Chestnut trees in the early 20th century.

Many Native American groups had diets that capitalized on foraged berries and other seasonal foods. In the Midwest that can be cherries, currants, blueberries, and chokeberries – also known as Aronia.

Horton said he has tried to make sure ISU educates students about different local products. There is even a 28-acre farm just outside Bloomington that grows nothing but Aronia berries.

There will also be bison to eat at the event, taken from Plains Indians diets.

“We’re going to do a seared bison strip steak with a Wojapi sauce. You can use different kinds of berries but we’re going to use the local Aronia berries. It’s an intense flavor. When you taste it on its own, it’s like eating a big bite of something really tart, like cranberries. When you have the sauce with that bison they really interact and the savory bison lessens the tartness,” said Horton.

A recurring theme in a lot of Native American cultures is the “three sisters” — corn, beans, and squash planted all together. They reinforce each other and self-fertilize each other. Horton said he is planning a three sisters mash this year as part of other programming in the campus dining service and education programs that emphasizes sustainability.

“Most indigenous cuisine had a relationship where one item proliferated from others. To go back to the wild rice example, the traditional harvesting method would be in a canoe. They would pull those reeds and smack them, and the wild rice would fall off into the boat. Some of that also fell back into the water. That was what naturally re-fertilized for the next growing season,” said Horton

Food has a power to sustain or erode the culture of a people.

“Destruction of habitat or people’s land was a very easy way to ‘talk people into relocating,’ so to speak. If you don’t have means to feed yourself to survive, then quickly, you’re dependent on others. Things that would be classified as colonial ingredients — wheat flour, milk, sugar, domesticated animals, like pork, and beef — all those things were not part of Native American food. Food sources affected things like diabetes and heart disease,” said Horton.

Food was a weapon in the Euro-American campaign to dislocate Native Americans in the late 1700s to the late 1800s.

“I think we’ve seen in history, no matter where you go in the world, that was always a tactic. If you want to win in battle, you certainly look at the logistics and if you take away clean drinking water or different ingredients, that shapes things very quickly,” said Horton.

Horton said he wants to go beyond the Autumnal Festival and some classroom-centered presentations to help teach students in interdisciplinary ways.

“How do you take the steps to make it a common part of our menu and the education is ongoing as students eat throughout the year. We’re getting ready to build a brand-new dining center. I think that’s scheduled to open in just a couple years. One of the things we want to include in that center would be an international cuisine station. And so that includes Native American cuisine. I look at every recipe we’re developing or showcasing right now, as work towards that,” said Horton.

Horton said he hopes to showcase ingredients such as pecans, maple sugar, pumpkins, honey, and whitefish, all common to the Midwest.

The Horticulture Center festival Saturday and Sunday will also include Native American artifact identification, presentations on rangeland management, and Native American artists and musicians.

The Horticulture Center is a part of the Agriculture Department at Illinois State University. It encompasses 10 acres and is located on Raab Road, north of the University Golf Course, and across the street from Heartland Community College in Normal, Illinois. The Horticulture Center is also linked to Constitution Trail.

We welcome visitors to a thoughtful discussion centering the work, experiences and knowledge of Black arts administrators, curators and collectors. Black Artists of Oregon curator Intisar Abioto will be in conversation with Elisheba Johnson of Wa Na Wari; Maya Vivas and Roux Haile of Ori Gallery; and Tai Carpenter of Black Gallery PDX about their practices of place-making for Black healing and communion.  

A couple recognized the Washoe weaver Louisa Keyser’s prodigious talent and spun myths to promote it. But her fortitude shines in work that today can be seen in museums and at the Independent 20th Century fair.

The Native American baskets sold in the early 1900s out of Abe Cohn’s Emporium, a men’s clothing store in Carson City, Nev., were exceptional. They were woven by Dat So La Lee, said to be a “princess” from the nearby Washoe people whose royal status permitted her alone to utilize a special weaving style.

The truth was less exciting. Dat So La Lee preferred her English name, Louisa Keyser. She was a Washoe woman, but the tales Cohn and his wife, Amy, spun about her — her esteemed heritage, her meeting with the Civil War general John C. Frémont — were myths.

As for many of her baskets’ distinctive and lovely incurving bulge, known as degikup, it almost certainly was influenced by the baskets of a different people, the Maidu, much as the fine stitching of Keyser’s work was lightly derived from the baskets of yet another Native American people, the Pomo. Nothing lent Keyser special authority to make her baskets her way.

“Interchange and borrowing was common in the production of baskets for the curio trade,” Marvin S. Cohodas, a professor emeritus of art history at the University of British Columbia who wrote an essay about Keyser accompanying the show, said in an email.

The Cohns originally hired Keyser to be their washerwoman, according to Cohodas. The Cohns noticed her skill — she may have begun by twining around Abe’s whiskey flasks — and backed her financially in exchange for her exclusive weaving services (she no longer had to clean for them).

The Cohns fashioned their apocryphal embellishments as the baskets’ extraordinary artistic value became apparent. They also arranged for her to weave outdoors or, during winter, in the Emporium window; at least once, Amy Cohn lectured while Keyser posed near her.

No matter their back story, Keyser’s baskets sold well and today are considered remarkable. They can be found in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And, after just a small handful sold in the past half-century — one, in 2007, for $1.2 million, a high at the time — they are about to receive a new spotlight: Five will be featured at the Independent 20th Century art fair opening Thursday in Lower Manhattan as part of what the fair calls a “major highlight exhibition” designed by the architect Annabelle Selldorf.

The prices for the five baskets, one of which by Tuesday was on reserve, range from $350,000 to $1.5 million, said Donald Ellis, whose namesake Vancouver gallery commissioned the mini-show.

Keyser, who lived from around 1850 to 1925, is among the most prominent names in Native basket weaving, said Jessica L. Horton, a professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of Delaware. Ellis, in an interview, called her “the Rembrandt or Michelangelo of the field,” adding of Native American art, “It’s considered the best basket-making culture in the world, and she was the best in it.”

Melanie Smokey, a Washoe weaver, said: “Our Washoe tribe, which is a very small tribe, is known across the nation because of her work specifically.”

Keyser’s baskets were arguably made possible not only by her talent and efforts, but by the support of white patrons, a sensational legend and a contemporary “basket craze” that placed a premium on the exoticism and authenticity of Native crafts.

It is notable, in an era vexed by questions of cultural appropriation, that Ellis is not shying from this kink in the story of Keyser and her baskets. Promotional material from the gallery refers to the Cohns’ “elaborate false narratives” and the halo of “pseudomythological significance” they constructed around Keyser.

“While there are some today who imagine the Cohns’ having taken advantage of Keyser, the aim of this presentation is to foreground Keyser’s exceptional artistic output while acknowledging the complicated relationship that enabled it,” Ellis said in an email.

Herman Fillmore, the culture and language resources director of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, said that cultural borrowing was common in Keyser’s time among Washoe, for example in their adapting modern materials such as canvas to build warmer homes. “It’s not right for the rest of us to tell our basket weavers how to weave their baskets,” he said.

For Horton, the professor, Keyser’s story is important to understanding her baskets, if not in the way the Cohns intended.

“It’s complicated where we put our gratitude,” she said, “but thanks to the fraught relationship that unfolded around the Cohns’ Emporium and her own artistic brilliance and fortitude, we know her name and have an archive through which we can reread the details of her life, and the pretty inspiring story of a Native woman at the turn of the 20th century navigating a global art market under conditions of terrible colonization.”

The five baskets at the fair are from Keyser’s classic, middle period. They include one from 1916 titled “Myriads of Stars Shine Over Our Dead Ancestors,” which, Ellis said, Abe Cohn esteemed as her greatest work (as does Ellis). Another, titled “Brotherhood of Men,” was the one the Ellis Gallery sold in 2007 for $1.2 million. Most of the approximately 150 surviving works by Keyser are at institutions, Ellis said.

Then as now, the degikup evident in four of the show’s baskets is a source of much of the enthusiasm around them. “It’s a high-walled basket,” said Horton, “and in its most perfected form the actual designs integrated into the walls of the basket will flare and then get smaller to add emphasis to the sculptural shape.”

For centuries, baskets have been an important part of the culture and lifestyle of the Washoe, whose word for “lake” was taken for the Sierra Nevada’s most famous landmark. (The name Lake Tahoe, Fillmore pointed out, is something like “lake lake.”)

Like other developments in weaving during the period, degikup arose not out of utilitarian considerations — that is, the best way to design a basket used to carry things — but rather out of the demand for baskets from non-Native consumers who sought them as artworks.

“The fact that these baskets would not receive hard wear meant that more area of the basket could be covered with design,” Cohodas said. “Innovation was thus rampant, with weavers drawing on whatever was available, including new tools, shapes, materials and designs.”

One Pomo weaver adapted Keyser’s degikup, he noted. A Yokuts weaver used Apache designs. The Washoe weaver Sarah Jim Mayo was, like Keyser, widely imitated.

“There was no criticism of these actions as appropriations,” Cohodas added. “Likewise there was no criticism when most Washoe weavers took on the degikup shape, and many weavers also adapted Keyser’s flame design and scatter pattern.”

Heather Law Pezzarossi, a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University, argued that our contemporary arguments over cultural appropriation are misapplied to Keyser’s baskets.

“Authenticity is a completely Western, American fixation we’ve mapped onto this concept of indigeneity to make it part of an American past, not an American future,” she said, noting that it was the Cohns who were most invested in the concept.

“Instead of valuing these baskets because of the ways that those Western art dealers told us to value them a hundred years ago,” Pezzarossi added, “why don’t we look at them afresh and value them a different way?”

Independent 20th Century

Sept. 7-10, Battery Maritime Building at Cipriani, 10 South Street, Lower Manhattan; independenthq.com.

Art collectors Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg will present their collection publicly for the first time, with a major exhibition by some of the most significant women artists from the past eight decades, through their Shah Garg Foundation.

Making Their Mark will showcase works by more than 70 women artists, including Cecily Brown, Judy Chicago, Etel Adnan, Joan Mitchell, Jenny Holzer and Simone Leigh. The show will be free and open to the public at 548 West 22nd Street in New York (the former home of Dia Chelsea), from 2 November 2023 through 27 January 2024. From there, it will travel to California’s Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in September 2024, then to the Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis in September 2025.

“Women are still significantly underrepresented in museum collections and on exhibition rosters, and many women of incredible achievement have not been given the scholarly and public attention they so richly deserve,” Shah said in a statement, adding that the exhibition aims to make “a visually compelling case for a rigorous expansion of the art canon by showcasing works by brilliant and prodigious artists who happen to be women”.

The exhibition will be curated by Cecilia Alemani, director and chief curator of High Line Art, who also curated the 2022 Venice Biennale.

“One of the most striking aspects of the Shah Garg Collection is that it captures a period in time through core artists that are defining this moment, but also traces a network of influences and inspiration,” Alemani said in a statement. The exhibition features work by contemporary women alongside their predecessors who, in many ways, “anticipated the current discussions around representation, identity and power” in the art world today, she adds.

A native of Ahmedabad, India, Shah moved to California in 1991 to study computer science and worked for more than a decade in the executive suites of major tech companies like Oracle, Netscape and Yahoo. After leaving Silicon Valley in 2008, she began developing an art collection with Garg, her husband and a tech entrepreneur. They landed on a vision for the collection’s emphasis on women artists in 2014. Since 2011, Shah and Garg have amassed a groundbreaking collection of nearly 300 pieces that they routinely lend to museums—including Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s painting Escarpment (1987), which was included at the Whitney Museum of American Art this year during the artist’s retrospective. Marking Their Mark follows the May 2023 publication of a book by the same name that explores the artists and works included in the Shah Garg Collection.

Shah will speak on a panel during live programming at this month’s Armory Show in New York. She will discuss the importance of building a conscious body of work with a positive impact with fellow collectors like Sarah Arison and George Wells.

Gallery East Press Release

The work of seven Brigham Young University (BYU) artists will be on exhibition at Gallery East during the month of September. The exhibit, entitled “Expanding Methodologies,” will feature screen prints, a printing process made famous by Andy Warhol in the 1960s and 70s, created by two BYU art faculty and their graduate students from Sept. 5-29 in the Central Instruction Building on the Utah State University Eastern campus.

Professors Jen Watson and Fidalis Buehler directed the project in addition to making work for the exhibition. “The purpose of this exhibition was to provide graduate students and faculty an opportunity to make artwork outside the normal bounds of their own practice,” they explained. “This allows each person to expand knowledge and skill in new areas of methodology.”

Five graduate students, including Mary Ann Crabtree, Melanie Fischer, Samantha Snyder, Megan Rowley Stern and Eugene Tapahe, will share their work invoking the popular print process.

Crabtree chose to create an ode to her child-rearing years, a time often fraught with food mayhem, with (in addition to her screen prints) “an installation of mostly ceramic sculptural groupings of common, larger-than-life scale forms representative of typical foodstuffs associated with children.”

Fischer, who was born and raised in Germany and is now living in Provo, is inspired by the two cultures in which she has resided. She attempts to capture “details, intersections, and momentary situations that are easily overseen or taken for granted.”

Snyder, a California native, explained that “experience with reclusion and detachment often creates an eerie and uncanny space that beckons to be explored. My artwork is a physical system of this search through repeated, obsessive iterations of applying paint, tearing, collage and destruction.”

Rowley Stern believes that “nourishing her creative passions and nurturing her family are inextricably intertwined.” She is a multidisciplinary artist who responds to her daily life via video, installation, painting and soft sculpture.

Tapahe draws inspiration from his Diné (Navajo) traditions and modern experiences to bridge the complexities of two worlds by portraying “the fragility and resilience of Native American culture in these opposing realms” and unifying this dual existence in his concepts.

Professor Buehler is known for creating “complex representations of identity through American and South Pacific tradition, with each piece becoming a self-portrait of fear, anxiety, mythology, dreams, revelation, magic, mysticism and ritual.”

Professor Watson creates work that recognizes the past and present of human growth from childhood to adulthood simultaneously in a space that “reveals itself as objects, portraits, landscape and particular atmospheres as metaphors that hover through a threshold of magic realism.”

“While the work takes on new and differing results, the concepts for each artist remain largely the same. Each artist filters their concepts through the screen-printing process and allows for new things to emerge,” explained Buehler and Watson. “This exhibition is part of an ongoing and changing collection of prints that will be shown in several locations in the coming years.”

USU Eastern in Price is one of the stopping points on a traveling exhibition tour to Glendale Community College in Glendale, Arizona, and Modern West Fine Art in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“Expanding Methodologies” will be on view through Sept. 29. The artists will be at Gallery East for a reception and gallery talk on Friday, Sept. 8, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Students, faculty, staff and the public are invited. The gallery is located in the Central Instruction Building.

The gallery is free and open to the public during the academic year. Gallery East’s hours are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed weekends and holidays.

For questions, contact Noel Carmack at (435) 613-5241 or by email at noel.carmack@usu.edu.

GREENSBURG – Art on the Square Gallery on the north side of the Greensburg Square is displaying the works of artists Vern Bedel and Leslie Newton until the end of September.

Friday evening, during the Farmers Market Fourth Friday, the artists were on hand to greet AOTS patrons and answer questions about the pieces on display.

Newton is a Decatur County native who worked in the Jay School Corporation in Portland, Indiana, for 36 years as an art teacher.

Newton received her Bachelor degree, her Master’s degree and an Endorsement for Gifted and Talented Students at Ball State University, and is following a path set by her mother and grandmother, who are both artists as well.

She won a Lilly Scholarship to study in New Mexico where she found her love for all things southwestern.

In 1999, she received the Indiana Elementary Art Educator of the Year award while helping write the Indiana K-12 Standards for Art Education.

She’s returned to New Mexico seven times since retiring.

She enjoys painting native southwestern architecture and geology, and for this show Newton chose oils and acrylic paintings portraying the Native-American dwellings seen in her travels.

“When you go out west, you see the skeletal bare bones of the earth. Very angular, very flat, and I love the way the light plays, but here in the east, shapes are softer and it seems that everything is covered in green,” she said.

Bedel was born and raised in Decatur County, but explored many different paths before getting his Bachelor degree in Art at Ball State.

Fascinated by the works of M.C. Escher and “tessellation,” a style for which Escher is well-known, Bedel shared Escher’s style with his students while teaching art in Elwood, Indiana.

Bedel’s other works represent different parts of his career as an art teacher and they range in topic and appeal.

The phases in Bedel’s life vary in sharp contrast from each other, and so do the nearly 45 pieces making up his display at the Gallery.

Art on the Square Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.

Visit Art on the Square Gallery in person or online at www.artonthesquare gallery.com/.

You may think you know all there is to know about Dale Chihuly, master of glass, whose delicate handblown creations take the medium to the realm of fine art.

But stepping inside the Boathouse, the former Seattle boatbuilding workshop on Lake Union that has served as the headquarters of his artistic production since 1989, reveals a museum-like space that celebrates not only Chihuly’s curvaceous, colorful glass forms, but the artist’s many decades of collecting both art and antiques. And while you can’t visit, you can get a taste of the space in a new book, The Boathouse: The Artist’s Studio of Dale Chihuly, from the University of Washington Press.

From the street, the Boathouse is a nondescript 25,000-square-foot box with gray corrugated metal siding. Inside, Chihuly has filled every nook and cranny of the space with a cornucopia of visual delights, from an 85-foot-long banquet table made from a single slab of a 500-year-old Douglas fir set beneath his signature Murano-inspired glass chandeliers to the floor-to-ceiling shelving in the downstairs bathrooms that display the covers of vintage children’s books like The Hardy Boys.

Something of a collector of collections, Chihuly has—in one room alone—antique cast-iron dog doorstops, Edward S. Curtis photogravure portraits of Native American women, some 300 Pendleton blankets, and floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with Native American baskets, as well as glass forms by the artist that they’ve inspired. And that’s just a few of the untold treasures that await around every corner.

Pendleton blankets, a 1914 Indian Motorcycle, Native American baskets, and Dale Chihuly glass forms they inspired in the Northwest Room at the Boathouse, the artist’s Seattle studio. Photo by Nathaniel Willson, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

For many years, the Boathouse served as both home and studio for Chihuly and his wife, Leslie Jackson Chihuly, who serves as president and CEO of Chihuly Studio—and also handles press for the interview-shy artist, who has bipolar disorder.

“It’s kind of a living art piece itself,” Jackson Chihuly told Artnet News. “He’s basically designed every inch of that place.”

Born in 1941, Chihuly actually got his start studying interior design at the University of Washington in Seattle, before enrolling in the glass program at the University of Wisconsin in 1965. A Fulbright Fellowship allowed him to work at Venini glass factory in Venice in 1968, learning techniques he would bring back with him to Washington, where he cofounded the Pilchuck Glass School in 1971.

Dale Chihuly chandeliers and an Algonquin Tribe hand-carved birch canoe over a 85-foot-long Douglas fir table in the Evelyn Room at the Boathouse, the artist’s Seattle studio. Photo by Nathaniel Willson, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

A leader in avant-garde glass art ever since, Chihuly had a breakthrough moment in 1995, when he staged “Chihuly Over Venice,” installing his chandeliers amid the city’s bridges and canals. Major exhibition have followed, many at botanical gardens but also at the de Young Museum in San Francisco; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto; and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Undoubtedly, Chihuly helped elevate glass blowing from a functional craft to an art. But in some ways, Chihuly’s incredible success and high-profile commissions, like the flowery glass ceiling at Las Vegas’s Bellagio casino, have overshadowed his artistic achievements, reducing his work to the realm of the decorative or even kitsch.

When Artnet News visited his office, a 10-minute drive from the Boathouse, the team was in the process of constructing an elaborate blue and white glass tower designed to sit inside a staircase on a private yacht.

Vintage books line the downstairs bathrooms’ walls at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by John Gaines, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

In contrast, Chihuly’s own studio provides a totally different context for his oeuvre, as part of a gesamtkunstwerk in which every corner is infused with the artist’s unique vision. (Chihuly and his wife hope the Boathouse will someday be open to the public as part of the Chihuly Foundation.)

Some of the most stunning areas of the space are where Chihuly has incorporated his work into the very architecture—a sunken bathtub with jagged glass crystals embedded in the basin, and a functional aquarium in a darkened room with tropical fish swimming amid otherworldly glass “coral” illuminated by black light. (The show-stopping indoor swimming pool, meanwhile, which has some 400 glass sculptures installed beneath the water, is currently closed for repair.)

At the heart of the studio is the hotshop where the Chihuly produces most of his glass—although he has had long-term relationships with different facilities internationally over the years, blowing glass in France, Japan, the Czech Republic, Finland, and Israel.

The Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio, in 2016. Photo by Nathaniel Willson, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

The walls of the hotshop are lined with colored glass, in solid rods or crushed or powered form—each piece starts with clear glass, to which the color is added. There are also rows of samples of what each color looks like once blown, arrayed next to some of the metal tools used to create the various undulating and spherical shapes.

The artist’s team, which varies in size based on what projects are in the works, works under the Chihuly close supervision. He got in a serious car accident in 1976, which cost him his sight in his right eye. This loss of vision and depth perception made working with molten glass more dangerous. Three years later, he dislocated his shoulder while bodysurfing, and was no longer able to lift the heavy glass blowing pipe.

Glass samples and optic molds at the hotshop at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Nathaniel Willson, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

Instead, Chihuly began creating works on paper to help communicate his vision to the studio, a workflow that continues to this day.

Those large-scale paintings are among the works that decorate the walls of the Boathouse, hung below a unique collection of giant papier-mâché masks and above the banquet table in what’s been dubbed the Evelyn Room, after a large cursive sign purchased at a Tacoma thrift store. Chihuly has also translated some of his paintings into glass light boxes, displayed with two of his 1950s sports cars in the Tin Room, named for its tin-paneled walls.

The kitchen at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Sarah Cascone.

Upstairs, an entire wall is given over to functional black and yellow dartboards—a work by Jacob Dahlgren. (Other artists on display include David Hockney, Michael Lawson, and Italo Scanga, a close friend who was such a frequent houseguest that the downstairs bedroom is named in his honor.) There’s a spacious kitchen, and a sun-dappled library with a spiral staircase leading up to the Chihulys’ lofted bedroom.

You never know what you’ll find around the next corner, from Pez dispensers to vintage accordions—and it’s all just steps not only from the busy hotshop, but also the bustling waters of Lake Union.

Chihuly, who once worked on an Alaska fishing boat, appreciates being able to see the boats are going about their business, a reminder of Seattle’s industrial history, and also the Indigenous people who have called this landscape home for thousands of years. And for nearly 25 years, the lake has been a hotbed of artistic experimentation, where Chihuly has crafted his most innovative work—and carefully curated a most inspirational space in which to carry out his practice.

See more photos of the Boathouse below.

The Alley at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by John Gaines, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

The Rondel doors, a Persian Ceiling, and work by Michael Lawson at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Nathaniel Willson, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

The Italo Room at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Sarah Cascone.

Glass sculpture in a bathtub at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Sarah Cascone.

Dale Chihuly chandeliers and paintings, as well as giant papier-mâché masks and an Algonquin Tribe hand-carved birch canoe, over a 85-foot-long Douglas fir table in the Evelyn Room at the Boathouse, the artist’s Seattle studio. Photo by Nathaniel Willson, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

Dale Chihuly chandeliers and paintings, as well as giant papier-mâché masks and an Algonquin Tribe hand-carved birch canoe, over a 85-foot-long Douglas fir table in the Evelyn Room at the Boathouse, the artist’s Seattle studio. Photo by Nathaniel Willson, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

Pendleton blankets and a 1914 Indian Motorcycle in the Northwest Room at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Nathaniel Willson, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

Dale Chihuly glass on a 1,100-year-old, 2,100-pound Douglas Fir table, Native American baskets, and Edward S. Curtis photogravure portraits of Native American women in the Northwest Room at the Boathouse, the artist’s Seattle studio. Photo by Nathaniel Willson, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

Dale Chihuly glass on a 1,100-year-old, 2,100-pound Douglas Fir table, an Algonquin Tribe hand-carved birch canoe, Native American baskets, and Pendleton blankets in the Northwest Room at the Boathouse, the artist’s Seattle studio. Photo by Nathaniel Willson ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

Glass sculpture in the aquarium at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Sarah Cascone.

I, the world, things, life, a wall of dartboards, at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Sarah Cascone. ” width=”1024″ height=”768″ srcset=”https://www.mecreates.com/story/news/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/IMG_1024-1024×768.jpg 1024w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/08/IMG_1024-300×225.jpg 300w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/08/IMG_1024-1536×1152.jpg 1536w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/08/IMG_1024-2048×1536.jpg 2048w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/08/IMG_1024-50×38.jpg 50w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/08/IMG_1024-1920×1440.jpg 1920w” sizes=”(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px”>

Jacob Dahlgren, I, the world, things, life, a wall of dartboards, at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Sarah Cascone.

Dance-hall star lights from the 1920s and vintage string dispensers at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by John Gaines, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

The library in the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Nathaniel Willson ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

The Tin Room at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Nathaniel Willson, ©2023 Chihuly Studio.

Colored glass rods at the Boathouse, Dale Chihuly’s Seattle studio. Photo by Sarah Cascone.

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As downtown visitors celebrated the first Friday of September with painting and food trucks, the 10th annual Artist Alley exhibit had an opening reception.

The majority of artists who contributed to the newest exhibit attended the celebration and mingled with their fellow exhibitors, of which a handful were new to the public art space.

Near the Main Street alley opening, Lesley Wysong spoke to visitors about her fourth piece in the alley, “Indiana Pollinators: Ten Butterflies for Ten Years.”

It took her about a month to paint.

Each butterfly was meant to represent a year the Artist Alley had been open. Accompanying her painting, Wysong distributed pamphlets that listed each of the native butterflies and host plants that promote their population growth.

Pointing to a small blue butterfly at the bottom of the painting, she explained the Karner Blue once lived in the Indiana Dunes. The population disappeared a bit more than a decade ago because of the loss of wild lupine.

According to the University of Notre Dame, “the Karner blue is believed to have gone extinct at the Indiana Dunes, making it the first federally endangered species to suffer this fate in a national park due to climate change.”

“Hopefully the rest of them won’t become extinct,” Wysong said.

In a later email, though, she noted, “Sadly this will likely not be the last butterfly species to experience extinction as some species are more fragile and have more specific habitat requirements thus a much smaller range.”

Wysong’s painting from last year’s Artist Alley exhibit is now on display at the Kokomo-Howard County Public Library’s South Branch butterfly garden.

Titled “Hope Blossoms,” the painting depicts each stage of a monarch butterfly’s life.

The artist said she hopes the painting and butterfly garden encourages visitors to research native pollinators at the library and plant pesticide-free native plants and flowers to support the butterflies.

If everyone did a little bit to help, she said, they could make a noticeable difference.

Nearby, Lisa Ananich Freeland, prepared to show off her first painting in Artist Alley, “Owl No. 2 Love Effervescent.”

Her first owl painting can be found in the neighboring downtown Artworks gallery, along with her art dolls. The artist said she looked forward to painting a third owl.

She also noted she prefers to produce large-scale paintings. While Freeland enjoys murals, she added, the large marine boards in the alley can be moved if the artist or a customer wants to bring the paintings somewhere else.

“It’s a great thing to be a part of,” Freeland said of the Artist Alley. She added she was in good company and had been excited for the chance to display her work in the outdoor gallery.

Another newcomer, Dajanell Johnson, said she was encouraged to submit work to the Artist Alley by one of its frequent contributors, her former teacher Deb Edwards.

She explained her painting, “A Walk in a Park,” depicts an idyllic setting she first painted during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s meant to distract audiences from stress and remind them to appreciate life.

It took a bit of effort to reproduce the work on a marine board, she said, especially the gradient shading on the painting’s rolling hills.

Johnson said the installation made her feel more successful as an artist.

“I’m just glad my name is getting out there,” she said.

Heather Polk returned for her second year in the Artist Alley.

As a crowd gathered around her painting, “Lemon Blueberry Doughnuts,” she explained there were two Kokomo sites that inspired her work.

In the painting, a lemon and a blueberry — both wearing dark sunglasses — float on a pair of innertubes. The lemon and blueberry, she explained, were inspired by a lemon blueberry doughnut from Lucky Lemon Bakery. The innertubes were inspired by Kokomo Beach.

She said the joy of last year’s artist reception prompted her to resubmit work to the alley.

Polk had purchased two paintings from Alley artist Robin Coyner and was excited to meet him during the 2022 dedication.

“To talk to him and have him approach my art last year and just talk to me about it was just such a surreal feeling,” Polk said. “It’s pretty much for the experience again and also to say ‘yeah, I can do this. I can make something bigger.”

Each of the paintings in the alley are for sale, ranging from $150 to $1,200.

“You’re supporting your local economy, your creative economy,” said Susan Alexander of the Greater Kokomo Economic Development Alliance.

Inside the Artworks gallery, a collection of photos were hung on the second floor’s wall.

An empty alleyway is shown in the first few photos. Local Boy Scout troops are shown painting the backdrops the works now display.

As visitors walk along the wall, they’re able to see each piece of art that has been featured over the decade. At the far end of one wall, there are photos of additional backdrops being installed.

The alley has been full every year.

Ramona Daniels is one of the most frequently exhibited artists in the alley.

Between conversations with people popping into her Artworks gallery studio, she said the sense of community brings her back to Artist Alley each year.

This year’s installation, titled “Beauty in the Garden,” depicts two peacocks. One is blue, the other is white. Daniels said it’s meant to represent diversity.

“In spite of our differences, we’re all beautiful and we need to learn how to love and respect each other,” Daniels said. “We get the opportunity to say something to the community. I just like to create pieces for people to look at and maybe get some hope — inspire them in some kind of way.”