Renowned glass artist’s mother dies at 98

TACOMA – When glass impresario Dale Chihuly was a kid, he played among the vivid colors in his mother’s North End garden. Viola Chihuly, who nurtured the garden and her son, died Tuesday of complications from a recent stroke. She was 98.

She died in the house where her artist son – a burly, cheerful eccentric with a black patch over one eye – grew up surrounded by her flowers, later reflected in glass art displayed around the world.

“When I was 10, we moved into the house that my mother just died in,” said Chihuly, 64, in an interview with the News Tribune of Tacoma. “It had a large and complicated garden. Her main interest was taking care of my brother and me and tending that garden.”

Born Viola Magnuson, she moved to Tacoma from Eastern Washington in the 1920s. She and her husband, George S. Chihuly, had two sons, George W. and Dale. George W. Chihuly died in 1957 during an aviation training exercise at a Naval base in Florida. Viola’s husband, a butcher and union organizer, died the next year of a heart attack.

But she had a zest for life, her son said.

“She loved big parties,” Dale Chihuly said. “I had a lot of buddies, and they always wanted to hang out at my house because they knew she would feed them or let them have a party if they wanted one.”

Chihuly said his mother encouraged him to choose his own road in life as long as he included college in his plans.

Chihuly lives with his wife and son at his Lake Union glass studio, where he designs and supervises. He has not actually blown glass since 1979, after he lost an eye and injured his shoulder. His work has been shown around the world, and some installations – huge chandeliers hung over the canals in Venice, for example – have been the subject of public television programs.

He also helped found the Pilchuck Glass School near Stanwood, Wash.