Before we boarded our cruise to Alaska, we spent a night and a day in Seattle. The last time I was in Seattle was when I was a national sales manager for BCS. One of our biggest clients was in Seattle, and lucky for me, I got to go on a business trip.
That trip was decades ago, and all I remember was the excitement of being in the Pacific Northwest. On this trip, I had one priority stop: Chihuly Garden and Glass.
I’ve been a fan of Chihuly since I first saw his works. Collecting glass is a mini-passion for me. I started out with Depression Glass, but realized I’d never have a Martha Stewart-size pantry to store all of my pieces.
Chihuly’s work is immediately recognizable: colors, shapes, and of course, the way every work catches light. I’ve admired and gazed at Chihuly’s pieces in Chicago, London, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Atlanta and probably a few more gardens and museums – maybe even a zoo or two.
Gardens and glasshouses are an intoxicating combo for me, and for Chihuly. In March, we popped into the glasshouses at Kew Gardens, where I marveled at the way light lit up the plants and even the plumbing on the ceiling. The glasshouse at Chihuly was inspired by Kew’s two, soaring elegantly into the sky high enough to invite the Space Needle to peer into the glasshouse below and encouraging visitors below to look up.
I took lots of pictures, but still wish I’d taken more. You know how it is when you want to go back and really look at something, but you’re not there anymore? My images in the gallery focus on close-ups and reflections, spotlighting creatures in waves and glossy multi-color globes.
We got there early so I had time to take quiet moments to admire the glass without a screen of other fans in front of me. After the studio, we walked through the glasshouse into the garden. There’s something about hard, shiny surfaces that complements plant colors and shapes so beautifully.
A tall rock candy stick spear caught my eye. As did rods in waves, curves in blooms and spheres on soil, which animated the scene with a lively story that couldn’t be told in any garden except this one.
Leaving the garden, I stopped to wonder at a collection of chandeliers ornamenting a walkway, and then it was inside to the theater. The film presented Chihuly as a collaborative artist who doesn’t think about how the work will evolve; he follows his gut instead. I thought about all the times when creativity seemed to appear with a nudge to follow a path I hadn’t ever noticed or seen before.
As the galleries and garden filled up with visitors, I made my way to the studio’s gift shop. “How was your visit?,” the shopkeeper asked. “Wonderful!” I said and then recounted all the visits to places I’d seen Chihuly. He laughed and said, “Now you’re at the Mothership.”
Indeed.
If you’re a Chihuly fan, you can catch his work at Chihuly at Meijer in Grand Rapids this summer.
Of note: I wrote this entire piece in about 20 minutes with no AI editing at all. This was after I’d spent a few hours asking AI to rewrite the blog post based on an audio transcript with my thoughts. Maybe it really is quicker to invite creativity into your space. Let your art catch your light.
All images by Barbara Rozgonyi with a Sony a6600 with a Tamron lens, straight out of camera.
