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Cascades Garden with Chihuly installation: Fiori Boat and Niijima Floats
In 2004, Dale Chihuly did a set of installations for the Atlantic Botanical Garden. Over the last 12 years, Chihuly has advanced his site specific glass installations and once again the Atlanta Botanical Garden and Chihuly collaborated for a series of 20 new installations.
Fern Dell Paintbrushes
Before I entered the Garden, a place I had not been to before, there was a video that Dale had done on his work and on what he hoped to do with his new installations in the Garden. He wanted the glass installations to look organic, as if they were part of the landscape. Some of them were so organic you almost missed them they blended so well with the other flora and fauna in the Garden. It was only when the light caught the glass that you realized they we not plants but glass.
Indigo Blue Icicle Tower, the first installation upon entering the garden.
As soon as you pass through the visitor center and set out on the path, you take a hard left to clear the building, and the first installation appears. However, Chihuly blended it so well with the natural setting, that it takes a moment or two before you realize its not a plant. It just looked like some new exotic plant.
Green Hornets and Waterdrops, Neodymium Reeds
I was up on the Kendeda Canopy Walk, dazed and confused at the size of the Garden and how to follow the map when I look down and see these wonderful purple spears that at first I think are some form of tropical reeds. Okay it was hot, it was humid and all these plants were closing in on me, give me a break. I just couldn’t get over how organic and natural the installations he had done, looked in place.
White Belugas
The white belugas were my favorite, if I was forced to pick one. But these looked like real gigantic blooms with plants around them acting as leaves to the flower. When I first stumbled onto them, the sun was behind a cloud so I was reeling from the fact that the people at the Garden could get something to bloom that big, when the sun came out and hit the glass and everyone had the same shock of surprise and then we all started laughing. It was just so deceptively real.
Saffron Tower
I wasn’t crazy about this one. It certainly is beautiful but in terms of the others, this was one of the least organic installations in the Garden. Maybe at night it works better as all the installations are lit at night and I would imagine look totally different.
Turquoise Marlin
This one was magical and my photo doesn’t show that. I had to make a choice between showing the scale of the piece, which is what you see here, and using a wide-angle so you could see that it is set in a tiny Japanese Garden that is just exquisite. The wide-angle however so distorted the installation that I didn’t use it.
Carmel and Red Fiori
This installations surrounds the huge oval lawn at the Garden and at the other end sits the orchid house. I have only put in 8 of the 20 installations as to do all at once would make the blog too long. I will at some later date or dates finish up so you will get to see all 20 of them. Unfortunately, because of the site specific nature of the installations, the show will not be traveling. It will have a permanent home however out in Kansas.
J. Leone 
Saw his installation at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas and was just enthralled! However, with these pieces you’ve detailed here… as beautiful as some of them are, I wonder if they don’t completely overshadow the magnificent plants and landscaping of the garden. Gardens have traditionally showcased art, true… but at what point does a garden then become an Outdoor Museum, with the plantings fading like old wallpaper…?
They actually look like they belong and are part of the landscape, except for that tall tower. The thing about photography is you can’t see the either space that they sit in, so it distorts it in a way that the human eye does not.