Full-Blown Blooms
Fantastic floral fantasies meet the real things at the Atlanta Botanical Garden
By Catherine Fox, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
Photos by Nick Arroyo
Against the Midtown skyline, an otherworldly creation by glass artist Dale Chihuly shines.
Renowned artist Dale Chihuly has transformed the grounds with his glass sculptures. Blown in brilliant colors and a panoply of shapes, the 2,859 individual pieces have been carefully grouped throughout the garden. Onion-shaped spheres float in the pool in front of the greenhouse. Skinny, brilliant blue spikes rise among the cacti in the Desert House. Objects hidden like Easter eggs await discovery.
The artist is a master of his medium. But clearly, he couldn’t have done this by himself.
You might say it takes a village to raise a Chihuly. Said village consists of studios and warehouses in Seattle and Tacoma, Wash. There, a staff of 75 labor like elves in Santa’s workshop to bring his visions to fruition all over the globe.
The Tacoma native always liked the camaraderie of a collective. He co-founded the Pilchuck School in 1971, which fostered collaboration among diverse artists. Hiring gaffers (glass blowers) became a necessity in 1979, when a bodysurfing accident forced him to stop blowing glass. (He had already damaged a foot and ankle and lost an eye in a 1976 car accident.) But even before then his projects had grown so complicated and plentiful that they required an organization.
Chihulyland, as his staff calls it, runs on a well-defined division of labor. In addition to gaffers, there are designers, installers, shippers, curators, accountants and marketers. Each employee has his appointed task, but they interlock like Legos. “We are symbiotic in our skills and talents,” says 12-year veteran Tom Lind.
Chihuly sculptures resemble giant colorful blossoms. Nearly 3,000 of the works will be on display at the Atlanta Botanical Garden into October.
“Dale has created a culture,” says project director Jennifer Lewis. “He imbues all of the people with his aesthetic. He invented a language, and we all speak that language.”
This language has legs far beyond the confines of Chihulyland. The artist’s ability to draw large and diverse audiences impressed Mary Pat Matheson when she was executive director of Red Butte Gardens and Arboretum in Salt Lake City. The future executive director of the Atlanta Botanical Garden had admired his first conservatory project at Chicago’s Garfield Park Conservatory in 2001 and noted the success of his 2002 Winter Olympics exhibition in Salt Lake City. She brought that memory with her when she joined the garden in late summer 2002.
“On the plane, I thought, my dream would be to bring Chihuly to Atlanta,” she says.
Not one to let grass grow under her feet, she was talking to Chihuly’s people by the fall. Armed with plans and digital photos of the property, Chihuly and his team began working on a proposal. Their raw materials were the thousands of objects executed in past years kept in a huge storeroom for this purpose. Though constantly developing new forms, Chihuly adds to ongoing series as well. “Sea forms,” for example, suggest shells and marine creatures. “Venetians” are sinuous shapes inspired by Venetian art deco. Extravagant chandeliers constitute another series.
He and his staff combined and reconfigured the objects to fit the pinpointed sites on the Atlanta garden”s grounds. If he needed something new — like the sparkling yellow chandelier in the conservatory— he made sketches for his gaffers to execute.
A worker who goes by the name of Raven works on the ''Chihuly in the Garden'' exhibit at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. It took 10 days to install the exhibit.
The team flew in a day after the trucks arrived. It spent 10 days setting up the installation. On one bright morning, a cluster of workers were putting up two vertical sculptures in the planters behind the conservatory. One man in rubber gloves unpacked the individual pieces and handed them up to another on a ladder, who slid the hollow tubes onto the spokes of a metal armature that looked like a coat rack. The festive sculpture took shape quickly. Shaded from the sun in a blue straw hat and rhinestone-studded sunglasses, Lewis calmly presided over it all.
Chihuly, who had never seen the garden, didn’t arrive in Atlanta until the afternoon before the patron party last Thursday. He and his team spent an hour touring the grounds. During such inspections he might tweak a piece or two. Here, he reports the next morning, “I didn’t change a thing.”
By that time, his team had packed up all their equipment and headed back to Seattle, leaving behind only two cases of glass cleaner and a bag of diapers. Oh, and a spectacle that awaits your visit.