New app: Blow glass like Dale Chihuly

Much like overpriced coffee, Seattle is also known around the world as the hometown for glass blower Dale Chihuly.

The world renowned artist has classes and his museum holds demonstrations, but it’s nothing like having a hotshop at your house. But now there is new technology to get you started.

If you have an iPhone, you can get a free app that lets you simulate glass blowing in the palm of your hand and crate Chihuly-inspired art.

Select one of three shapes (Fiori, Macchia and Seaforms), blow into your phone to create the molten glass form, mold it, bend it, and then choose layers of color. You can add more shapes to build an installation worthy of hanging from the ceiling of the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.

After you complete your genius work, you can share it and look at what other budding phone artists have created.

“Chihuly has done for glass art what Faberge did for decorative art – push the boundaries of a medium beyond what people thought possible,” Joe Alexander, chief creative officer of The Martin Agency, said in a news release. “We thought mobile technology was a perfect way to bring his achievement to life for people outside the museum’s traditional audience.”

If this is just the beginning to your new-found glass love, check out the Chihuly exhibit in Seattle or the Museum of Glass in Tacoma.