Dan Owen Dailey (born February 4, 1947) is an American artist and educator, known for his sculpture. With the support of a team of artists and crafts people, he creates sculptures and functional objects in glass and metal. He has taught at many glass programs and is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Art, where he founded the glass program.
Emerging from the studio glass movement initiated by Harvey Littleton, Dailey's work has branched out from the mainstream by the incorporation of metal into many of the sculptures. Additionally, he has worked with several glass companies, for more than twenty years. Since 1971, Dailey's work has been featured in more than 150 exhibitions and included in over 350 juried or invitational group shows.
Early life and education
Dan Dailey was born on February 4, 1947, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Daily attended the Philadelphia College of Art (now called the University of the Arts, BFA 1969) and Rhode Island School of Design (MFA 1972). Dailey studied with Dale Chihuly at RISD, and was Chihuly’s first graduate student. In 1972 to 1973, he was awarded the Fulbright Fellowship to study glass at the Venini Factory in Murano, Italy.
He is married to Linda MacNeil, an artist also working with glass and metal, primarily in the studio or art jewelry field.
Career
1970s
Dailey worked at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston from 1973 until 1985; where he was the founder of the glass department. Additionally he taught in 1975 at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington. In the 1970s, Dailey continued to create illuminated sculpture and vase forms, and began to develop Vitrolite wall reliefs.
In 1975, Dailey received a fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Advanced Visual Studies in Cambridge where he co-taught the class Glass, Gas and Electricity with German artist Otto Piene. This experimental sculpture class emphasized and explored the phenomenon of illumination. In conjunction with the MIT Research Lab for Electronics, Dailey further studied the qualities of light and glass.
From in 1978 to 2003, Dailey created 7 editions of pâte de verre works with Cristallerie Daum, a French decorative glass studio. Dailey's editions of work with studio Daum include, Les Danseurs, Le Vent, Le Joyeau, L’Eau, Le Vin, Le Soleil, and La Dame.
In 1979, he received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship–Glass award.
1980s
During 1980, Dailey was awarded the Massachusetts Council on the Arts Fellowship–Glass.
From 1984 until 1985, he worked as an independent designer and artist with Steuben Glass Works in Corning, New York. At the request of Steuben, Dailey produced sports-themed designs to be produced on vases, with one design, Ice Dancers, being produced.
Additionally from 1984 to 1985, he worked as an independent designer and artist at Fenton Art Glass Company, in Williamstown, West Virginia. Together with Fenton Art Glass Company, Dailey worked on producing cast glass components of a low-relief mural. Over a period of 20 years, Dailey made 26 large scale murals, one of which was by , weighing over . With numerous assistants, Dailey also blew glass to create various works, notably, the mural Science Fiction Series (created 1985 to 1986).
1987 Commission: Orbit, Rockefeller Center, New York City
In 1987 Henry Geldzahler, Milton Glaser, and Hugh Hardy selected Dailey to make a cast glass relief mural titled Orbit, for the Rainbow Room at the Rockefeller Center. The mural is a by abstract representation of orbiting planets and artistic debris, illuminated from behind with changing colors coordinated with the mood lighting of the dining/dancing space. In 2018 Orbit was removed and donated to the Toledo Museum of Art. Dailey also created wall sconces for various locations around the Rainbow Room complex. These works were later removed and their location is unknown.
1987 Solo exhibition: Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Henry Geldzahler wrote an essay for the catalog, in which he noted, "Dan Dailey's achievement is in the seamless marriage he effects in his work in every medium between the idiosyncratic convolutions of his inner landscape and the classic harmony and lucidity of the great tradition in glass, of whom Daum, Nancy and Lalique are giants. Dailey's work joins in that tradition, but with a contemporary spin that causes the viewer to smile in complicity."