Seattle's Stranger has two pieces on glass artist Dale Chihuly--

"The Bridge of Glass is terrible. And I never wrote about it when I was in Tacoma because I was worried that someone would try to kill me. It has completely revolutionized downtown Tacoma, but as art it is a complete failure. It is a concrete slab with some art thown up on it. The art has nothing to do with its location. It's all recycled work. You're looking at a wall of Venetian vases, these bong-like things, and there's like 70 of them, so you end up with this kind of Baskin-Robbins mentality, like, Today I'll have that one. This is glass, outdoors, and it�s completely covered, with video camera surveillance, and air control so that no steam gets in there, because if steam gets in there you can't see the glass, but it's not outdoor work. The one piece that is outdoor work is this plastic thing that looks like giant aqua rock candy, so gift shops have been making and selling aqua rock candy as souvenirs. This is what downtown Tacoma is supposed to mean? After going through the humiliation of losing the railroad terminus to Seattle, and being the laughingstock of Puget Sound--this aqua rock candy is what represents the rebirth of Tacoma? I don't know what happened there. I think Dale just wanted to experiment with aqua rock candy looking shit, and no one talked him out of it, because no one is powerful enough to talk him out of it. Akron, Ohio, recently purchased some rock candy towers for their city from Chihuly Inc. The good thing is you can shoot them, and the bullets will just sort of glance off, the art won't break. So feel free to shoot them."