Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA – 16 AUG 2011

Before I knew it was my destination, I fell in love with the building:

The Tacoma Museum of Glass in on my top ten museums list...loving glass, the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York is also on that list. Unlike the Corning museum which is the world’s largest glass museum and features many exhibits relating to the history of glass, the Tacoma museum focuses on Contemporary and Pacific Northwest glass-art and is an active environment for current artists.

Outside glass gardens:

The 90-foot stainless steel cone is actually the world’s largest Hot Shop…a glass workshop, amphitheater around a furnace containing several thousand pounds of clear molten glass. It is where visiting artists create their masterpieces in front of visitors while a narrator explains each step and several cameras capture the action and display it on an overhead screen.

The glass is red hot...he rolled the clear class in black beads...when it cools it will be black glass:

There are several openings to the furnace containing the molten glass:

This is resident artist Courtney Branam...he's making an AK-47 out of glass:

This is one of his pieces:

You can watch the Hot Shop, live (M-Sat 10-5 PST): Link to Hot Shop

The balcony above the workshop floor has these items on display:

The item below has flowers and bees that were made separate and the the globe was added around them:

The photo doesn’t do it justice as it looks flat when it was 3-D with intricate flowers and bees all made out of glass. There were some really impressive items in the gallery that did not allow photographs.

Tinky Winky finds like-minded friends in the gift shop:

Even the 'Ladies Room' was artistic:

In the lobby, there was an artist making glass beads:

Above the museum is the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, a walk-way to downtown.

Because of the reflection I couldn't photograph the wonderful vases on display as part of the bridge, but I was able to capture their shadows:

Becoming one with the art:

The view from the bridge was great:

From the museum, I got a good view of the dome:

Driving away I got a good view of the SR 509 bridge, a cable-stayed over the Tacoma Thea Foss Waterway: