If you’re a Dale Chihuly fan, there is a show in June you’ll want to book plane tickets for.

Next month, the glass master will mount a solo show at San Francisco’s de Young Museum and Legion of Honor. It’s not only his first West Coast show in a while, it’s his biggest show ever, with 11 rooms and thousands of pieces of his signature swirly, grandiose glass.

It’s a comeback of sorts, as the artist has seen some lean years with only a few shows, a lawsuit and major depression.

But you don’t have to go to California to see either Chihuly or his latest work. An exhibition opening Saturday at Tacoma’s Traver Gallery not only showcases recent work and a personal appearance at the opening, but also marks the start of a new relationship as Traver becomes Chihuly’s sole Northwest representative.

The sheer scope of the de Young show invites the question of whether Dale Chihuly is still the darling of glass art. Although it’s not a cheap exhibition – “My shows tend to be kind of expensive,” says Chihuly – the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco must expect a high turnout based on the name.

While Chihuly’s shows have been limited in the last two years, they’ve certainly garnered crowds: A 2005 show at the Colorado Fine Arts Center drew 71,000 people, the center’s biggest show ever, according to communications director Charlie Snyder.

Since Chihuly’s first glass-in-the-garden exhibition in 2001, there have been eight such shows at venues from London’s Kew Gardens to the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, Pa. At the Phipps, the eight-month show in 2007 doubled attendance to 400,000 and increased membership by 56 percent, museum officials say.

Since the Tacoma Art Museum Chihuly cell phone tour was introduced in 2006, some 4,500 calls have been made to the self-guided tour of Tacoma’s public Chihuly works. An August 2006 Chihuly residence at the Museum of Glass drew huge crowds, requiring timed tickets and long lines.

Commissions, too, seem to keep rolling in. A towering red-icicle chandelier hangs in the Ballard studio, ready for transportation to a private buyer; a massive sculpture for a yacht lurks in the corner like an octopus.

Chihuly’s studio wouldn’t release either buyers’ names or prices.

Chihuly is even one of the artists selected as an option for customizing the new iGoogle homepage, a list that includes sculptor Jeff Koons and baby photographer Anne Geddes.

Still, Chihuly’s career hasn’t been completely glossy lately. Depression related to his bipolar disorder – well publicized in media reports – has plagued the artist for the last couple of years. A nasty 2006 lawsuit against a former gaffer for copying his work, and media criticism that he’s a “glass celebrity” rather than an artist, don’t help. Yet to museum crowds and art collectors, Chihuly still seems to be as attention-getting as his voluptuous sculptures.

“He’s at the height of his career,” says William Traver, who with this upcoming show has begun an exclusive relationship as Chihuly’s Northwest dealer, after former representative Foster/White gallery changed ownership. “He’s been through some depression. Now things are settled and some problems are behind him, he’s on a roll. He seems to be his old self again, like he’s having a lot of fun. And that’s reflected in his new work.”

John Buchanan, director of the de Young and the catalyst for the show there, agrees: “The exhibition clearly demonstrates Dale’s mastery and artistry.”

TACOMA SHOW IN TRAVER GALLERY

Traver Gallery’s first solo exhibit for Chihuly, which will showcase his new work, will take up the entire gallery space; previously just a couple of pieces occupied the back corner.

Drawings make up a major part of the show, in particular those that complement, in shape and color, the Basket glass series which the artist is revisiting. Inspired in 1977 by American Indian baskets at the Washington State History Museum, the slumped, round shapes began fairly simply, as one example in the Tacoma Art Museum lobby shows.

Lately, though, the melted glass-rod “drawings” on the surface have become more complex, and Chihuly has revived a burnt-yellow color – tabac – that he last used for the first baskets in the ’70s.

“The color was very interesting, a rod we got from Germany,” explains Chihuly. “It was really beautiful, then it changed, and I didn’t like it any more, so I didn’t use it again. Then just a couple of months ago I discovered it was back to the original, so I started making glass with that color again.”

Cylinders, also a revisited series, make up the remaining part of the show. Traver says Chihuly intends to be present at the show’s opening.

SAN FRANCISCO SHOW

For the de Young, however, Chihuly and the organizing Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are pulling out all the stops.

“I’d call it a retrospective,” says Traver of the de Young colossus. “It represents a lot of older work as well as new work.”

The show represents a lot of work, period. Chihuly has a team of 10 glass blowers working six days a week in his Seattle Boathouse hot shop. While it’s hard to pin down the hours due to multiple projects, the artist estimates it’s taken a year or two to produce all the glass for the exhibition. That’s not to mention the careful packing at the Tacoma warehouse and the dozen employees who travel down with the 15 containers full of glass parts, or the two weeks it’ll take them to install them.

Because for a 66-year-old artist with his own promotion company and factory-style editions, there’s a lot of ground to cover – and the de Young show covers it all. Among the featured items:

 • A reworking of Chihuly’s 1971 “Glass Forest” from his early teaching days at Rhode Island School of Design – the first time it’s been seen in America since then.

 • A room full of each of his major series: the Middle-East-inspired Persians, the curly Venetians that grace Tacoma’s Bridge of Glass, a new Black series, a forest of wavy-lipped Macchia, five chandeliers, boats full of 500 round Nijima Floats and 500 twisty Ikebana.

 • A wall of paint drawings, a pergola similar to the Bridge’s ceiling and the “Mille Fiori” garden that drew adoring crowds to the opening of Tacoma Art Museum’s new building in 2003.

 • The baskets showcased at Traver will, at the de Young, be the centerpiece of a Northwest room, surrounded by hundreds of Indian baskets and Pendleton blankets from Chihuly’s vast collections of objects. It’s the first such display to show some of the famously eclectic collections, most of which are stored in the huge warehouses in Tacoma. “I’ve been asked before, but this time I thought I’d do it,” says Chihuly, “because this is the biggest show I’ve ever done.”

 • Then there are the four installations: two inside (an icicle-like blue chandelier and a blue-green sea sculpture, both at the Legion of Honor museum) and two outside (a writhing yellow-red orb at the Legion of Honor and a 30-foot-high saffron-neon-lit tower at the de Young.) Each installation has up to 1,200 parts, weighing thousands of pounds.

If this all seems like way too much art for one person, that’s because it is. Chihuly has built himself an empire, where 70 employees blow, assemble, ship and market glass in four locales – the Boathouse on Lake Union, an inconspicuous Ballard studio where most business and installation is done and two Tacoma warehouses used for storage and shipping.

ART BY DELEGATION

It’s well-known that Chihuly hasn’t blown his own glass for years, thanks to the eye-injury that necessitates the famous black eye patch. Seattle sculptor Parks Anderson has created most of his installations for 20 years, with Chihuly vetting mock-ups.

The Saffron Tower was the handiwork of neon expert Roger Ligrano, with Chihuly requesting the color and general shape. Even his recent drawings rely on studio employee Damian Villarreal to wield the blowtorch that creates their scorched color and blistered texture. Says Chihuly: “I don’t have to do much.”

A good example of this delegation is “Mille Fiori.” When the installation – a huge “garden” of twisty glass pieces – opened TAM’s new Predock building in 2003, nearly 100,000 people came to see it over eight months. The exhibition was extended twice, “by popular demand,” says museum representative Alyssa Rosso, and devotees even picketed outside to keep it after it had come down.

Yet the de Young version of “Mille Fiori,” smaller than TAM’s at 56 feet long and 12 feet wide, “probably won’t use any of the Tacoma pieces,” says Chihuly. After installations like this are taken down, they’re stored as hundreds of individual pieces in the Tacoma warehouse.

When the installation is needed again, Anderson picks some out and sends images of the mock-up to Chihuly, who decides if he likes them – at which point they’re packed up and installed by the team. (The final installation will be similar in concept to the Tacoma one, but not exactly the same – something worth knowing for those who want to revisit the original.)

The one artwork that Chihuly still seems to do himself are the drawings, done with paint and pencil (“on Saturdays and Sundays,” says the artist) using tube-spattered acrylic, backing wash and swift, chunky strokes, before Villarreal – under Chihuly’s guidance–burns waves of ochre and shining bubbles of paint with the blow-torch.

Scrawled over it all is the famous Chihuly signature, his brand, which the glass icon seems to take just as seriously as any 30-foot neon tower.

“You see, I did this one thick, with a brush, and this one with a pencil, and then I etched this one into the paint,” he points out, standing over a set of drawings lying on the ground amid forklifts and crates in the Ballard studio courtyard.

“Which one do you like best?”

Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568

What: “Chihuly: Baskets, Cylinders and Drawings”

Who: Traver Gallery

When: 5-8 p.m. Saturday, then 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays and noon-5 p.m. Sundays through June 8

Where: 1821 E. Dock St., Suite 100, Tacoma

Admission: Free

Information: 253-383-3685, www.travergallery.com

performance: Vince Mira will play three solo acoustic sets for Chihuly’s opening reception; 5-8 p.m. May 17. ‘Chihuly at the de Young’

It’s Dale Chihuly’s biggest show yet: A mammoth exhibition covering most of his career and much of the de Young Museum and Legion of Honor in San Francisco, not to mention some enormous outdoor installations. For the Chihuly fan, it’s the show you just have to see. For others, it could seem like a severe glass overdose. Here’s what to know, if you go.

What: 11 rooms of Chihuly glass art in the de Young: a reworked 1971 Glass Forest, a Venetian and Ikebana room, a Persian room, a Northwest Baskets room, a Macchia Forest, Reeds on real birch logs, Ikebana and Float Boats, a Chandelier room, a Black Series room, a Pergola ceiling and a Mille Fiori garden; plus two indoor and two outdoor installations at the Legion of Honor

When: June 14-Sept. 28

Where: de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco; Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, 34th Avenue and Clement Street, San Francisco

Admission: $10; 65 and older, $7; 13-17 years old and college students with ID, $6; 12 and younger, free; tickets to one venue gain free entry to the other venue on same day

Information: 1-415-750-3600, www.famsf.org