I spent a few hours in the morning going to get and eye exam. I thought I was having problems with my left eye but after an hour in the office, as a walk in patient, and $60 I was given a bill of good eye health. So it was off to the glass museum upon my return to the hotel. This was a great example of a museum's architecture matching the beauty of its contents. We have been to glass museums in Corning NY, Sunderland UK and Seattle WA and this one stacks up against any of them. The current exhibit showcased the mind blowing work of Yoichi Ohira a groundbreaking Japanese glass artist. They also had an extensive gallery of Chihuly glass and another exhibit featuring works of stacked glass. A most delightful visit!
The exterior of the museum was striking
What an odd item to find in Japan
Large wooden panels inside the museum
Chihuly
Similar to whet we saw in Seattle
There were stacked on top of each other in the ceiling of a passageway
An Octopus!
A boat load of glass spheres
So many textures and colors
A grand flourish
It reminded me of sea creatures
Shells and seaweed
Perhaps an eel or two
Looking down from the sixth floor all the way to the first floor
A large library shared the space
Light and lines
Vaulted space
No pictures were allowed in the stacked glass space but I took a few from the outside of the gallery
This was titled 30 days
Outside the big exhibit the showed a video of some of his pieces
Soo I took pictures of the video
These are from the video
Much better lighting than I could have gotten
Stacked
An eerie green face
Yoichi started in Kagami Crystal Works
He was inspired to work in glass by a novel he once read
The novel was based in Finland and was written by a Japanese author
It was titled Karelia in the Fog
It mentioned glass as a magical material capable of making beautiful music
He worked with glass for only 2.5 years before moving to Europe
Most importantly he moved to Venice the capitol of art glass making
Even with the cultural and language difficulties,
At 26 he was able to enroll at the Academia de Belle Arts and later apprentice one of the great glass houses in Murano
He worked up the ladder eventually gaining the title of Premio Selezione
He later became the Artistic Director at the De Majo glassworks
Eventually he went out on his own and for 40 years blazed a trail through the art worls
He was recognized with a commission at the Corning Museum Of Glass
His pieces are found in the Smithsonian
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Cooper Hewitt
American Museum of Craft and many more
Many of the works on display were on loan from Barry Friedman of New York
What a great story
What a great artist
A huge depth of work in so many stuyles
And this is just the first floor of works
Down we go for more!
Delicate techniques combines with vibrant colors
Inspiration from nature
Snow and ice
New York winter themes
The iridescent finishes
This is the piece from the poster
Imagine all the pieces that I did not take pictures of
We ended up in the vases
Very heavy multi-layered pieces
With transparent windows in the from allowing a view into the interior
Different angles presented different scenes
So much going on inside
Smaller windows of transparent
All the pieces were displayed so that all sides of the piece can be seen
The back is completely different from the front
Windows in these smaller vases
Is this the Japanese bigfoot, the Hinagon?
These vases were so intricate
I can only imaging how long it took to make
His last major style was submerged vases
Glass encases within clear crystal
So many layers inside, I can see a face here
Looking up from the first floor
A rustic ball track installation like the Mousetrap game of old
Decorated with wooden animals I did not realize there was a ball scooting through the entire structure
Here the ball is raised
Coming down the track
The mountains were looking particularly nice today
Then the clouds rolled in
Rain is on the way!
It has been 1 year and 357 days since we began our Migration
