Fire is a subject on the minds of many Canadians and Americans today. This Chihuly installation, Cattails And Copper Birch Reeds, makes me think of the flames consuming much of Quebec and the Maritimes. The photos of the smoke in New York, my home town, are shocking. St. Louis is far enough southwest that we have been little affected.
This frizzy sunburst and its twin behind me are permanent installations in the botanical garden and not properly part of the current Chihuly exhibition. They flank the large rose garden. The western one catches the last of the sunset.
The scene is the central reflecting pool at our botanical garden, where angels made by Swedish sculptor Carl Milles charm us with their flutes. One of Chihuly's boats filled with an explosion of colored glass seems to have come to rest. It's called simply Fiori Boat, the first word being Italian for flowers.
The works seen in this series get oohs and ahs from the public. However, I once asked an artist acquaintance what he thought of Chihuly. His review was in two words: too easy. Something to think about.
A different style of Chihuly glass work in the botanical garden. Looks dangerous to me. The purple spikes grow from a pile of cleanly-sawn logs, as if in reaction to the destruction of a tree. Any other ideas?.
Looking at a work of art often raises associations - that reminds me of something. This large piece called Vermilion and Canary Yellow Tower is at a major junction of paths in our botanical garden. It immediately made me think of a cartoon germ in a children's book, aggressive, threatening and scary. Lots of other reactions are possible, of course.
To my great benefit, Mrs. C is often sharper at spotting things than I am. I was stumbling through the crowd inside the Climatron, eyes on the path, when she told me to look up. There seemed to be an explosion of ice worms inside the rigid frame of the geodesic dome. This wasn't the whole story, though. Several steps further on I looked back and saw this:
A side-on view of a chandelier. We hope it is well-secured.
One of Chihuly's repeated themes is brightly colored spheres in and around a small boat. This one is located in the Japanese garden area. It raises questions. Is it simply a static display or is going somewhere? What is the nature of the cargo? Why have some spheres spilled out? As with so much of art, these questions are up to the viewer.
Our botanical garden has a large geodesic dome called the Climatron. Ingenious interior landscaping and air systems divide the area into four climactic zones. This group is called, I think, Ikebana, after Japanese flower art. It looks to me like it's in a lush tropical garden in, say, Hawaii.
Installations by the glass artist, Dale Chihuly, are ever-popular in this country. A big display opened recently in our botanical garden. There are nineteen pieces, large and small, indoors and out. This one is called Summer Sun. The garden is open some evenings and it was packed last night. More to come.
Our botanical garden has a number of events throughout the year to generate interest and revenue. This weekend they have Chinese cultural days, which, unfortunately, I won't get to because of schedule conflicts. But in a couple of weeks a show of the glass works of Dale Chihuly will open. Installation work was beginning during my recent visit. His art is enormously popular. On the other hand, when I once asked an artist I admire about Chihuly's work, his response was "too easy." I get it.
Since as usual there is nothing going on around here, I went to our gorgeous botanical garden on Sunday to get some exercise and images. They have a bunch of Chihuly glass around the place, this one on a side of the rose garden. (I was standing underneath its twin on the opposite side.) It looks like it needs a haircut worse than I do in these no-close-contact times. These could be solar rays or a punk rocker's yellow died hair.
I didn't know it before but the garden takes these glass tubes out for the winter. Freezing temps could damage them.
On our way back to Seattle from the Olympic Peninsula. we stopped in Tacoma, Washington to visit the Museum of Glass, a very cool place to see and learn about art glass. The Seattle - Tacoma region, perhaps because of the fame of Tacoma native Dale Chihuly. The building's architectural signature is the tilted cone that contains the Hot Shop, an amphitheater surrounding a set of glass ovens and work space.
