Visiting the Floating Glass Onions

It was a beautiful day on Sunday and we took les parents to see the Chihuly glass exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens. It was incredible! It's on until October 29th, and there are also lighting the installation some evenings (Chihuly Nights). In the first picture (one of the first pieces in the exhibit) the reflection is as much a piece of art as the glass. Some of these pieces took 6 assistants to install over several days. Mom liked the snaky effect in this one, I loved the way the colors mutated as you went up, from blue to green, and echoed the conservatory setting.

I especially liked the 'floating' walla wallas. Well, actually, they were tethered--they only appeared to float. I guess you can't have hundreds of glass pieces and a glass filled boat floating wherever they want and crashing into each other! The most interesting part about this exhibit though was how the glass interacted with the settings and how it made you look and appreciate the plants (and animals) more. I love this photo because I managed to capture one of the large goldfish swimming around the similarly-colored glass sculpture.


The last installation was a greenhouse filled with these beautiful objects. Are they flowers? Bowls? Canvasses? All this and more. We took about a million pictures, this is one of few without people in it so it looks like it could be in the brochure, IMHO.

The glass chandeliers are a specialty of his, and I particularly liked this one because it looks like a very artful bunch of birthday balloons. Festive!