The North Carolina Mint Museum in Charlotte. The Atlanta Botanical Garden (next to Piedmont Park). The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA. These are just some of the great places MJ and I recently had the pleasure of visiting, and at each one we were pleasantly surprised by a work done by the master glass sculptor Dale Chihuly. I say master because Chihuly is truly one of a kind and the best at his craft of making elaborate art pieces from glass; ever since MJ took me to a Chihuly exhibit in Seattle 2 winters ago, I was hooked and impressed by the distinctive style of Chihuly's works. If you've never seen it, they're defined by their distinctive colors, brilliant shades of yellow, green, red, orange, etc., but also by the shape of the designs in wavy, fanciful imaginative ways that remind me sometimes of snakes growing out of Medusa's head. Except really artful. I guess the glass makes it easier to shape them that way, but it's what I imagine viewing ice sculptures would be, it looks like Chihuly carefully crafted them himself and took really intricate care.
The Chihuly works that we saw were in unexpected but very scenic spots: surrounded by a pond, in a garden by itself, and hanging from a ceiling. They are magnificent works that is an attraction in itself. I imagine Chihuly to be kind of the sports equivalent of Kyrie Irving, not necessarily regarded as the best artist ever, but so distinctive in his style and dazzling with his ball handling skills (and for Chihuly, his glass handling skills) that it's a joy to see them perform, and really seeing it live and able to view it from all different angles and being in the presence of greatness is quite the experience, not fully able to be duplicated just by viewing them from pictures. I just hope to continue running into these Chihuly works as pleasant surprises when MJ and I do a world tour of all the art museums in the world; maybe we'll see one in France! Chihuly's works certainly have made it all over the world, although there are only a few places he has permanent exhibits, like the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Not sure when we would get there, but I've added touring various art museums in different cities to my list of categories to visit like baseball stadiums, college campuses, and now art museums.
The world in general loves masters of what they do. There's a sort of mystique about being the best at doing something, that there's only one person in the world that does what that person does. I've definitely personally spent many hours on Wikipedia reading about masters of different areas, whether it's Chihuly with his glass works, Lee Sedol with the board game Go, Bong Jong-ho with the masterful movie Parasite, even martial arts masters in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) that I've recently taken an appreciation in, have to train in so many disciplines of combat sports like jiu jitsu, wrestling, karate, Muy Thai, boxing, etc., etc. to become a master and a world champion. (This weekend, Chan Sung Jung nicknamed the Korean Zombie, Korea's closest thing to an MMA master, fights in Busan). Going to art displays around the world has allowed me to realize how masterful some individual people in the world are and how their ideas can inspire others, whereas before I just focused on sports score outcomes, my own life and ideals, etc. Greta Thurnberg is now a master in her own right at uniting people for climate change and urging action by political leaders, and now she's been named Time Person of the Year. At 16 years old! (on Jan. 3 she won't be able to say she's still 16, but still!) All these masters have in common that they weren't just born with incredible gifts capable of becoming masters, they were blessed with certain skills, but so are a lot of others! The masters are the ones who combine natural gifts with dedication and craft to pull themselves up from the crowd and work on their craft for so long and so much dedication as to become masters. I wish to become a master one day too.......at something. Biting my nails? Blackjack strategy? Obscure Japanese TV shows? Who knows.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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