Chilhuly Columbus!

Yesterday, my husband and our neighbors went to Columbus, Ohio to see the Chilhuly exhibition. I have seen the glass works of Dale Chilhuly in Washington state as well as his trade blanket collection and exhibition of works inspired by the blankets at the American Textile Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Currently, three locations in Columbus are highlighting his works. You can find the details here. We visited the Franklin Park Conservatory and the Columbus Museum of Art. If you are anywhere in the area, I encourage you to visit them.

Conservatories are great places to spend a winter day. I had never been to the Franklin Park Conservatory and as we drove up, I was enthralled by the wonderful patterns made from the great "bones" of any good garden--the bare limbs of trees, grasses and spent flower heads left for interest. Evergreens lent their own charm and the wonderful pattern of light and dark against the snow with the highlights of buff from the grasses and incredible blues, greys and whites of the cloud broken sky was just fabulous. I can't wait to come back and see the grounds in better weather. 23 degrees isn't exactly the temperature in which you want to walk around taking pictures.

I wished I could have found a better vantage point to show these wonderful glass sculptures, but it was pretty much enclosed by building. I would have prefered to be able to see them against the snow and the sky. Even so, I think you can get a sense of the wonderful pattern these showed.


Inside was warm and wonderful. As you walked through, not only were you taken by the great horticultural examples, but nestled amongst the green were shots of Chilhuly's pieces.

Some were fairly obvious and were placed so that the lights in the conservatory hit them. Others weren't so as when we entered the conservatory, the sun was hidden.

Chilhuly himself noted in DVD which was playing how much greenhouses inspired him. I have to agree. I took over 200 photographs yesterday between the Conservatory and the second location we visited, the "Chilhuly Illuminated" exhbition at the Columbus Museum of Art. I'll highlight that in it's own post and no doubt over the next months I'll return to show more photographs of the Conservatory.


These wonderful "flower baskets" were at the beginning of the Conservatory's show. They're huge, I think most about a yard across at the top.