Dale Chihuly discusses his glass sculptures yesterday at RISD. He’s helping his alma mater open its new Chace Center Saturday with an exhibit of his work.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

The first thing you see as you enter “Chihuly at RISD,” the sometimes dazzling but ultimately disappointing Dale Chihuly exhibition at Rhode Island School of Design, isn’t one of the artist’s flamboyant blown-glass sculptures. Instead, it’s a copy of Chihuly’s signature blown up to billboard size and rendered in a swirling semi-abstract scrawl.

As it turns out, it’s a strangely appropriate way to start the show, which opens Saturday at RISD’s new Chace Center complex on North Main Street.

For one thing, the free-form twists and turns in Chihuly’s signature look a lot like the free-form twists and turns in his sculptures. And the color of the signature — a venomous shade of acid-green — seems appropriate for an artist whose titles (among them, Citron-Spotted Ebony Venetian with Coiled Lilies and Black Basket Set with Cadmium Orange Lip Wraps) often read like shopping lists for a color-crazed Impressionist.

Unfortunately, Chihuly’s super-sized John Hancock is also appropriate in less flattering ways.

As much a showman as he is an artist, Chihuly is best known for his large blown-glass sculptures — dramatic works whose lush colors and fluid shapes often evoke shells, flowers, baskets and other organic forms. During the 1970s and ’80s, these eye-catching, technically challenging pieces helped rekindle interest in glass as a medium for serious contemporary artists.

Along the way, Chihuly, a Tacoma, Wash., native who graduated from RISD in 1968 (with a master’s degree in ceramics) and later founded the school’s studio-glass program, became the most famous American glass artist since Louis Comfort Tiffany.

In recent years, however, Chihuly has spent much of his time seeking ever larger and more grandiose stages for his work. In 1995, a Chihuly-led team of glassmakers transformed the streets, bridges and canals of Venice into a giant outdoor glass gallery. The result, dubbed Chihuly Over Venice, also spawned a coffee table book and a video documentary.

Other high-profile projects include the lobby ceiling of the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas and Chihuly at the V & A, a 2001 installation at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

While these projects have helped introduce Chihuly’s work to a wider public, they’ve also taken a toll on his reputation. A 1999 survey of American art critics, for example, ranked Chihuly in the top 10 in both the “name recognition” and “most overrated” categories.

More recently, a prominent West Coast critic (Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle) slammed Chihuly for indulging in “empty virtuosity” and mere “decoration.” (Ouch!)

The result is a kind of mid-career stalemate, in which Chihuly and his work remain hugely popular with everyday museum-goers while eliciting yawns — or worse — from a growing number of artists and critics (and, it must be said, from many of Chihuly’s fellow glassmakers).

It’s a pattern that “Chihuly at RISD,” which features about a dozen large sculptural ensembles as well as a smattering of smaller works, seems likely to repeat.

After making their way past the king-size “Chihuly” signature, the first thing visitors see is a smaller version of the famous glass-filled ceiling at the Bellagio Resort. In many ways, it’s a great way to start the show. Not only does it evoke one of Chihuly’s most famous artworks — the Bellagio ceiling — but it introduces many of the artistic concerns — lush color, the transformative properties of light, sensuous form — that have occupied him throughout his career.

If you’ve never experienced a Chihuly exhibit before, prepare to be dazzled.

On the other hand, if you have seen a Chihuly show before, you may have a different reaction: déjà vu. Indeed, ceiling installations have become something of a staple at Chihuly exhibits — the equivalent of a rock band kicking off a concert with a couple of crowd-pleasing oldies.

Next up: a huge wall filled with the poster-size “drawings” Chihuly likes to make in between glass-blowing sessions. Here again, casual museum-goers will probably be impressed by the sheer scale of the installation, which suggests a cross between a Jackson Pollock painting and an IMAX screen. On the other hand, there’s a lot more doodling than drawing in these pieces, most of which look as if they were tossed off in a few seconds.

Next, it’s on to one of the show’s highlights: a trio of blown-glass chandeliers. Though Chihuly has been making these show-stopping works for a long time now, the ones at RISD, all of which were completed in 2008, are among the best I’ve seen — visually striking and inventive, yet surprisingly elegant and understated (at least by Chihuly’s standards).

Then again, “understated” is not a word I’d use to describe to Mille Fiori, one of several large installation-style pieces in the exhibition. Located in the same area as the chandeliers, Mille Fiori consists of dozens of tube-shaped glass sculptures that seem to sprout, like a crop of mutant tulips, from a mirrored black floor.

The result is quintessential Chihuly — technically challenging, dramatically presented and beautiful to look at, yet with more than a hint of calculated slickness and showmanship. Indeed, you could also imagine Mille Fiori and its two companion installations — the lilac-hued Neodymium Reeds and the neon-lit Glass Forest — as high-end Christmas-window displays.

Museum visitors will also find several displays devoted to Chihuly’s smaller table-top sculptures, including examples of his Venetians, Baskets and Navajo Blanket Cylinders series.

Of these, the Venetians make the strongest impression, perhaps because they represent Chihuly at his most flamboyant and over-the-top. (Chihuly being Chihuly?) The pieces from the Baskets and Navajo Blanket series, meanwhile, all date from 2008, suggesting that Chihuly has begun mining his past work in much the same way that aging rock stars mine their back catalogs.

Meanwhile, Chihuly’s influence on other glassmakers is the focus of “Studio Glass in Rhode Island: The Chihuly Years,” a small companion exhibit installed just outside the Chace Center’s main gallery.

Besides giving props to some local talent — many of the artists are based in Rhode Island — the show highlights the diversity of contemporary art glass, with some artists emphasizing fluid shapes and colors (Toots Zynsky), others referencing art history (James Watkins) and still others treating glass as an offshoot of minimalist sculpture (Steven Weinberg, Howard Ben Tre).

The show also features several older Chihuly sculptures, including one of the original Navajo Blanket Cylinders that helped launch the artist’s career back in the mid-1970s. Though small and nearly colorless by Chihuly’s current standards, it has a freshness and unassuming beauty that’s missing from many of his more recent works. Indeed, it may be the best Chihuly of the bunch.

“Chihuly at RISD” and “Studio Glass in Rhode Island: The Chihuly Years” continues through January in RISD Museum’s Chace Center galleries, 20 North Main St., Providence. Museum hours: Tues.-Sun. 10-5. Admission: $10 adults, $7 seniors, $3 college students with ID, $2 ages 5-18. Contact: (401) 454-6500 or www.risdmuseum.org.

bvansicl@projo.com