Dancing 'Cross the Country: Tacoma Museum of Glass (MOG)

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Tacoma Museum of Glass (MOG)

Yesterday we took a rainy day drive to the Tacoma MOG and an unplanned side trip to Gig Harbor. It was a moody day, swinging between brief downpours of rain, dramatic clouds and bright blue sunshine skies. This proved to be a perfect backdrop for the architecture and outdoor exhibits of the MOG, as you can see here.

This glass sculpture in the fountain is called Fluent Steps and represents the different states of water.

Fluent Steps and the MOG building

The cone part of the building is the Hot Spot .

Another view of the Hot Spot.

Inside the Hot Spot is a glass blowing studio presented in proscenium theater style, with the audience looking down into a pit with five oven doors, kilns, and a team of working glass blowers. One of them doubles service as an MC of sorts, fielding questions from the audience and describing what the glass blowers are doing. There is a catwalk around the "stage/pit" so that you can view the work from all sides.

The glass blowing studio theater.

The ceiling is the inside of conical Hot Spot
which also serves as a chimney.

This man standing is blowing air into the glass at the end of his tube, and the other man is holding a mold that forms the glass as the bubble inside it expands.

This man is rolling his tube with a glob of glass at the end, which he is flattening the bottom of with

another tool.

Glass artist Cappy Thompsen's rendition of a glass blower.

Another permanent exhibit at the MOG is the Bridge of Glass, which seems to serve as a giant display case for pieces made by Chihuly, the very well known glass artist who is from Tacoma. One of my favorite displays, the Seaform Pavillion, was the glass ceiling of the bridge above which thousands of Chihuly pieces are laid out in a crowded chaotic fashion reminiscent of the tide pools I saw on the Oregon coast.