Seattle Blog and Recent Site Additions
June 28, 2012
Chihuly Garden and Glass Part Two--the Garden
Seattle Center's Delightful New Attraction
The Garden, Pacific Sun, and Glasshouse (Image Courtesy of Chihuly Garden and Glass)
GENERAL BLOG ARTICLE ABOUT CHIHULY GARDEN AND GLASS
Please click here to go to our June 27 blog article with a general introduction about Chihuly Garden and Glass and detailed information about Exhibition Hall and the Glasshouse.
THE GARDEN
The Pacific Sun overlooks the Garden
As you transition from the darkened galleries of the Exhibition Hall and into the sunny Glasshouse, you are getting prepared to enter the magnificent Garden. Chihuly has prepared many outdoor installations over the years and a number of them have been at botanical gardens. Many of these are documented in his books and DVDs.
The 16,000 square foot area for the Garden offered a vast landscape for Chihuly to deal with and the finished project is a masterful blend of landscape architecture with Chihuly’s art.
The Garden’s major piece is the Pacific Sun tower made of yellow and red glass. The Pacific Sun shines brightly on top of a tall mound covered in 4,500 plantings of black mondo grass.
Three other large pieces serve as the anchor art pieces for the Garden: the bright red Mexican Hat Tower, the deep pink Crystal Tower and the Citron Icicle Tower. The Crystal Tower is the only large installation composed of plastic—specifically, polyvitro. All of the anchor pieces are visible from the Seattle Center campus and they add a nice splash of color to the campus.
The Garden is composed of a series of beds that feature different plants and Chihuly installations. For garden lovers, this place is dramatic and your eyes will constantly move to take in all of the botanical and artistic detail that is installed in the Garden.
When you are walking on the east side of the Garden next to the Glasshouse, take a look at some of the globe-shaped floats. They can be really colorful and Chihuly uses them in garden beds.
The Pacific Sun at night (image courtesy of Chihuly Garden and Glass)
The beautiful blue flowers of the eryngium mingle perfectly with the tall and slender blue Reeds.
One of the brightly-colored glass installations in the Garden
My favorite installation is the 500-year-old salvaged old growth Western Red Cedar from the Olympic Peninsula. The beautiful wood of the tree serves as a nice centerpiece for an installation that features a lot of ferns and other plants intermingled with Chihuly’s Neodymium Reeds and black Seal Pups. The following four photos are from this installation bed.
The jet black Seal Pups are really cute as they swim away from the ancient cedar tree.
This float is really beautiful.
These black and white floats make for an attractive arrangement next to the black mondo grass
Chihuly loves to install the tall Reeds.
The red Reeds and the Citron Icicle Tower add a lot of color to the Garden
The Citron Icicle Tower
Detail of the Citron Icicle Tower
The Viola Crystal Tower and a matching rhododendron. The tower is made of polyvitro.
Please click here to return to our introductory blog article about Chihuly Garden and Glass
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