Pilchuck School Refines The Ark Of Learning

It rained that first summer, the kind of rain that passes into legend. ``We weren't sure if we were building a school or an ark at that point,'' recalls John Landon, who helped to install a pair of small gas furnaces that glowed under a sod roof on which the grass still grew. In the surrounding woods an impromptu array of shelters ranging from tents, teepees and scrap-wood cabins to a hollowed cedar stump, had sprouted like mushrooms. It was 1971, and the Pilchuck Glass School had been born.

``The houses were just like in `Winnie the Pooh,' '' says Dutch glass artist Barbara Vaessen, who came to Pilchuck the following summer with her husband at that time, Jamie Carpenter.

``You got Dale, John and Annie at just the right time. It was a wonderful combination,'' says John Anderson, president of Pilchuck's current board of trustees, referring to renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly, John Hauberg, and Anne Gould Hauberg. The Haubergs had long discussed ideas for a significant contribution to the arts of the Northwest, and were intrigued by a conversation with a Danish tree- farm owner whose son had set up a woodsy summer camp for his fellow architecture students.

Then the ebullient, persuasive Chihuly - already established as head of the glass department at the Rhode Island School of Design - told them he had a grant for $2,000 to create a summer-study project for glass artists. The Haubergs proposed their own tree farm on

Victoria Hill near Stanwood as its home. ``The first year, the only cost I covered was the building of a latrine,'' John Hauberg says. In subsequent seasons, however, he served as the patron of an artist's dream.

``We had debriefing sessions at the end of the summer, when we would ask the group how it had gone, and find out what equipment they needed. Then I would buy it,'' Hauberg says. Post-season conferences continue as a vital part of the Pilchuck procedure, but in the past decade - during the administration of recently departed executive director Alice Rooney - financial support has broadened to include an impressive array of corporate, public and private sources.

Pilchuck incorporated as a not-for-profit organization in 1973, when the first permanent structure - a hot shop for glass blowing - went up. In 1976, Seattle architect Thomas Bosworth won international attention for his design of the school's central administration building, which melds the practicality of a Skagit Valley barn with the contemplative beauty of a Zen monastery. Permanent dormitories, workshops and individual studios now are also tucked into the 40-acre site, although traces of the first impromptu building boom remain.

Like the meditative retreat center it resembles, Pilchuck has maintained strict controls over development. For environmental reasons, as well as to preserve the serenity and concentration of students and staff, the school imposes an informal limit of approximately 100 people on campus at any one time during the summer. Occasional open houses are generally sellouts.

Hauberg says that the restrictions on Pilchuck's growth and curriculum, are like those imposed on chess players, driving participants to high levels of creative response. According to Anderson, the history of Pilchuck ``has absolutely been a tightly focused effort.'' Without such a clear identity, Anderson says, ``it would have been just another art school.''

A glance through Pilchuck course schedules for the past several years gives some perspective on why the school is often cited as the world's leading center for art glass. Hot-glass design, casting, engraving, neon and painting on stained glass are among the topics of multiweek workshops led by teachers from Australia to Italy, from Boston to Prague. The student body is equally diverse, and includes both seasoned professionals and worthy students in university glass programs.

Pilchuck has been involved in the careers of many leaders in the Northwest's studio glass movement - Sonja Blomdahl, Paul Marioni, William Morris, Richard Royal, Joey Kirkpatrick and Flora Mace among them. As it moves toward its third decade, the school continues to explore ways to serve glass artists and their professional growth.

Under the Emerging Artist in Residence Program instituted this fall, five glass workers at the start of their careers have been given a stipend and 10 weeks of working and living space at Pilchuck. As winter rains pound down on the gray, wooden buildings and the dark forest, the artists may well discover what Landon, Chihuly and the others have known for years: Pilchuck is an ark and school in one.