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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2017
At 75, Chihuly shares struggles with mental health
By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press
SEATTLE — The private
studio of glass artist Dale Chi-
huly reflects his long obses-
sion with collecting. Sheets
of stamps cover one table;
pocket knives are marshaled
on another. Carnival-prize fig-
urines from the first half of the
20th century line shelves that
reach the ceiling.
Amid the ordered clut-
ter, some items hint at more
than Chihuly’s eclectic tastes:
a long row of Ernest Hem-
ingway titles in one book-
case, and in another an entire
wall devoted to Vincent van
Gogh — homages to cre-
ative geniuses racked by
depression.
Chihuly, too, has struggled
with his mental health, by
turns fragile and luminous like
the art he makes. Now 75 and
still in the thrall of a decades-
long career, he discussed his
bipolar disorder in detail for
the first time publicly in an
interview with The Associated
Press. He and his wife, Leslie
Chihuly, said they don’t want
to omit from his legacy a large
part of who he is.
“It’s a pretty remarkable
moment to be able to have this
conversation,” she said. “We
really want to open our lives
a little bit and share some-
thing more personal. ... Dale’s
a great example of some-
body who can have a success-
ful marriage and a success-
ful family life and successful
career — and suffer from a
Chihuly Studio/via AP
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
Glass artist Dale Chihuly poses for a photo in one of
his studios in Seattle in March. Chihuly is a pioneer of
the glass art movement and is internationally known for
styles that include vibrant seashell-like shapes and ambi-
tious installations in botanical gardens and museums. He
lost sight in his left eye in a 1976 car crash. More photos
online at DailyAstorian.com
really debilitating, chronic
disease. That might be helpful
for other people.”
A pioneer
Chihuly, who began work-
ing with glass in the 1960s, is a
pioneer of the glass art move-
ment. Known for styles that
include vibrant seashell-like
shapes, baskets, chandeliers
and ambitious installations in
botanical gardens and muse-
ums, he has said that push-
ing the material to new forms,
creating objects never before
seen, fascinates him.
Even in the past year he
has found a new way of work-
ing with glass — painting with
glass enamel on glass panes,
stacking the panes together
and back-lighting them to
give them a visual depth. He
calls it “Glass on Glass,” and
it’s featured for the first time
in the new Chihuly Sanctu-
ary at the Buffett Cancer Cen-
ter in Omaha, Nebraska, and
at an indoor-outdoor exhibit
opening June 3 at the Crystal
Bridges Museum of American
Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
But the flip side of that cre-
ativity has sometimes been
dark. He began suffering from
depression in his 20s, he said,
and those spells began to alter-
nate with manic periods begin-
ning in his late 40s.
“I’m usually either up or
down,” Chihuly said. “I don’t
have neutral very much. When
I’m up I’m usually working on
Glass artist Dale Chihuly
uses a broom to paint on
the deck of his Boathouse
facility in Seattle in 1992.
Chihuly, who began work-
ing with glass in the 1960s,
is a pioneer of the glass art
movement.
several projects. A lot of times
it’s about a six-month period.
When I’m down, I kind of go
in hibernation.”
He still works but doesn’t
feel as good about it. His wife
noted that if he only went into
the studio when he was up, he
“wouldn’t have had a career.”
Asked what his down peri-
ods are like, Chihuly took
a long pause. “Just pretty
tough,” he said. “I’m lucky
that I like movies. If I don’t
feel good, I’ll put on a movie.”
His wife
Leslie Chihuly, who runs
his studio, is more loquacious
about the difficulties his condi-
tion has posed in their 25-year
relationship.
They’ve tried to manage
it as a family with various
types of counseling, medica-
tion and a 1-to-10 scale system
that allows him to communi-
cate how he’s feeling when he
doesn’t want to talk about it,
she said.
Chihuly gave up drink-
ing 15 years ago, and it’s been
more than a decade since
he was “life-threateningly
depressed,” she said, though
he’s never been suicidal.
“Dale has an impeccable
memory about certain things,
but there have been certain
periods of time when he’s
been hypomanic, as we call
it, or depressed, and I’ll be the
keeper for our family and our
business around those difficult
times,” she said.
She met him in 1992 after
a mutual friend set them up.
He was in a near-manic period,
talking about an idea for bring-
ing glassblowers from around
the world to Venice, Italy, to
display their art in the city’s
canals. He had no plan and no
funding, but she was eager to
help him realize his vision —
one that would eventually be
depicted in the public televi-
sion documentary “Chihuly
Over Venice.”
Six months later, they trav-
eled to an exhibit opening at
the Brooklyn Museum in New
York.
“It was like the lights went
out,” she said, choking back a
sob. “All of a sudden the guy
who was interested in every-
thing ... that guy wasn’t there.”
Dale Chihuly remained
quiet as his wife described
that moment. A tear fell from
beneath the recognizable eye-
patch he has worn since he lost
sight in his left eye in a 1976
car crash.
Though the mood swings
were new to Leslie Chihuly
at the time, they were famil-
iar to the other artists Chi-
huly worked with. Joey Kirk-
patrick met him in 1979,
when she attended Pilchuck
Glass School, which Chihuly
founded in the woods north of
Seattle in 1971. It was a small
summer workshop; the stu-
dents constructed their own
shelter. She and her partner,
Flora Mace, spent many hours
watching movies with him
during his down periods.
“What amazed me about
it is his persistence at pick-
ing the thing, his creative life,
that would pull him along or
keep him going through those
times,” she said. “When he
was up, he could call you up
at Pilchuck on a Sunday night
and say, ‘Meet me at the air-
port at 10 tomorrow, we’ve got
a flight to Pittsburgh to go to
some demonstration.’ It was
always exciting. When he was
down, there wasn’t that. It was
quieter.”
Chihuly said the message
he’d have for others struggling
with the condition would be
to “see a good shrink” and to
“try to live with it, to know that
when they’re really depressed,
it’s going to change, before too
long. And to take advantage
when they do feel up to get as
much done as they can.”
Newly built trawler may get grounded by old maritime law
Industry shifts
Too much
foreign steel
By KARA CARLSON
Seattle Times
The largest, most modern
American-made trawler built
in nearly three decades may
be barred from fishing in U.S.
waters, with financial reper-
cussions to its local builder and
buyer “so draconian that nei-
ther company may survive.”
That’s the scenario painted
by the law firm that Anacortes,
Washington, shipyard Dakota
Creek Industries has hired to
seek a rare waiver from a cen-
tury-old law called the Jones
Act, which they acknowledge
wasn’t properly followed when
the shipyard began building
the state-of-the art, $75 million
vessel America’s Finest.
The shipyard’s mistake —
using too much foreign steel
that was modified before com-
ing into the U.S. — could
mean the advanced ship must
be sold abroad at a big loss.
According to the law firm’s
May briefing paper on the sit-
uation, that could “eliminate
two Washington companies
(and) more than 500 highly
paid and skilled trade jobs.”
Big upgrade
Fishermen’s Finest, a fish-
ing company based in Ana-
cortes and Kirkland, hoped
the 264-foot catcher processor
would represent a big upgrade
from its two 40-year-old ves-
sels, and help make the fishing
industry here safer and more
sustainable.
But as it nears completion,
the vessel threatens to sink
both the fishing company and
the shipbuilder.
Charlie Papavizas, a Jones
Act expert at the Winston &
Strawn law firm in Washing-
ton, D.C., who’s not involved
with the case, said that with-
out a waiver there are no good
options for the companies.
Legislation passed early
this decade opened the door
for replacing the nation’s
aging fishing fleets. That led
Fishermen’s Finest to take the
plunge, deciding to replace
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Ca ime
yt
n
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Mike Nelson/Dakota Creek Industries
The trawler, named America’s Finest, is being built for the fishing company Fishermen’s
Finest by Dakota Creek Industries shipyard in Anacortes, Washington.
one of its two nearly 40-year-
old ships.
It has already spent $62
million of the estimated
$75 million cost of the ship,
which is 86 percent complete
and expected to be ready in
November.
“Someone has to go first,”
said Dennis Moran, president
of Fishermen’s Finest. He
compared it to penguins lin-
ing up at the edge of the ice,
ready for one to venture in
and test whether the water is
safe.
“We’re the penguin and
now everyone is waiting to
see if we pop our head up,”
he said.
Jones Act
The Jones Act, the com-
mon name for the Merchant
Marine Act of 1920, regulates
a wide range of ship-related
laws, from workers injured
at sea to when passengers can
board cruise ships.
In order to fish or transport
goods and people within U.S.
waters, a ship must be assem-
bled in the U.S. by American
workers, and all major parts
of the hull must be made with
American materials.
Steel plates, beams or bars
can be bought abroad and still
qualify, but work on these
materials must be done in an
American shipyard.
“A foreign worker drill-
ing a single hole, or making
a single bend on a 2-ton steel
plate will automatically dis-
qualify the entire weight of
that plate” as American-made
under the Jones Act, no matter
how much additional work is
done on it in the U.S., accord-
ing to the briefing paper by
Jon Waldron, a maritime law-
yer at Blank Rome in Wash-
ington, D.C.
Such foreign-made parts
are limited to 1.5 percent of
a ship’s weight, under U.S.
Coast Guard rules.
But because Dakota Creek
had parts of the hull cut and
bent in Holland before being
processed in the U.S., Amer-
ica’s Finest has about 10 per-
cent foreign parts by weight,
according to Blank Rome.
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Waldron’s brief says the
actual value of the foreign
work on the steel was only
$275,000, or 0.4 percent of
the ship’s cost — but “because
the foreign work was done
on many different plates, all
those plates are disqualified.”
Jim Gilmore, director of
public affairs of At-sea Pro-
cessors Association, a Seat-
tle-based industry group for
the Alaskan fishery, said he’s
never heard of a similar situa-
tion with a ship coming out of
an American shipyard with-
out qualifying under the Jones
Act. It’s a rule most shipyards
should know, he said.
Dakota Creek Vice Pres-
ident Mike Nelson said the
company was unfamiliar with
details such as the 1.5 per-
cent standard. Company offi-
cials were also unaware that
compliance could be checked
beforehand by submitting
plans to a Coast Guard office,
he said.
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Moran of Fishermen’s Fin-
est said there’s a lot riding on
the completion of the catcher
processor — a ship that uses
long nets for catching fish and
then processes them and stores
them onboard.
Dakota Creek built the last
200-plus-foot Jones Act-com-
pliant catcher processor in the
United States — the Starbound
in 1989.
After that, regulations
designed for fishery conser-
vation limited which vessels
could fish and made it diffi-
cult to replace or add ships to a
fleet. In the past decade, fresh
rules began allowing a new
vessel to be added to a fleet if
it replaces another.
Moran said America’s Fin-
est would be a “big step” in
bringing the industry updated
technology that reduces green-
house emissions, improves
safety and uses more of the fish
that are caught. Nelson believes
the new technology would end
up saving fishing companies
money in the long run.
Moran said Dakota Creek
does have a contractual obliga-
tion to give Fishermen’s Finest
a Jones Act-compliant ship.
Waldron said this isn’t an
attempt to set a precedent for
more ships to gain exceptions,
or to overturn the Jones Act;
Dakota Creek is trying to get a
case-specific exception for this
ship only.
Political salvage effort
Jones Act waivers have
been granted before, but a sit-
uation like this is extremely
rare, said Papavizas, the inde-
pendent attorney.
For example, someone who
buys a 10- to 12-person com-
mercial passenger vessel at
a boat show might not know
the Jones Act requirements
and later find out that the ves-
sel would be considered for-
eign, not American. In order to
legally operate the ship in U.S.
waters they would need to be
granted an exemption.
Papavitaz said he didn’t
expect the case to set any prec-
edent. Even if Dakota Creek
obtains a Coast Guard waiver,
”There’s not a high chance of
this flying a second time,” he
said.
The lobbying effort has
gained support from U.S.
Rep. Rick Larsen, whose dis-
trict includes Anacortes. The
House transportation and infra-
structure committee in May
approved a Larsen-sponsored
amendment to the Coast Guard
Authorization Act of 2017 that
would allow an exemption for
America’s Finest.
Larsen told his colleagues
Dakota Creek is vital to his
district and “a lifeline to the
U.S. maritime industry,” add-
ing, “It’s not a mistake we
made, but one we can solve.”
Douglas Wagoner, a Larsen
spokesman, said the congress-
man had learned about the
issue with the trawler the week
before, and 225 Dakota Creek
workers urged him to take
action.
The waiver would still have
to be passed by both houses of
Congress.
Nelson is hoping that hap-
pens by late summer or early
fall, before the expected deliv-
ery of the ship. If the companies
can get past their current mess,
he believes the America’s Fin-
est embodies technology that
would end up saving the fishing
industry money in the long run.
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