Bridge of Glass

Thirty miles to the south of Seattle in the city of Tacoma, right outside the Museum of Glass, there is a 500-foot-long pedestrian overpass that crosses I-705 and some railroad tracks. This curious footbridge connects the Museum of Glass to the rest of the Tacoma Museum District, the University of Washington Tacoma, and a few hundred Starbucks locations. But in addition to its function as a footbridge, it is a bit of a museum itself, for it is known as the Chihuly Bridge of Glass.

The bridge contains three very different art installations by Dale Chihuly, the internationally-renowned Tacoma Washington native known for his glass sculptures. But it is the Seaform Pavilion that I find the most interesting, for it consists of a fifty-by-twenty-foot plate-glass ceiling topped with 2,364 objects from Chihuly’s Seaform and Persian series. The objects are lighted from above by daylight and by fluorescent lights, which are also used at night. The exhibit gives visitors the experience of a seemingly underwater world of glass shapes and forms a few feet above their heads.

Dale Chihuly’s Seaforms have soft, undulating sides and rims, and feature delicate, flowing forms and colors, while his Persians, the exotic cousin to the Seaforms, are a rich variety of cones, flasks, and roundels with spiraling ribbons of color.

The exhibit, a gift to the city of Tacoma, is open to the public and has no entrance fee. So the next time you find yourself in Tacoma, be sure to check out the Bridge of Glass. But be warned – all that looking up can be hard on the neck!