Nice Glass!
New Englanders have their apple picking, foliage drives and football weenie roasts. Here in Miami, fall kicks into gear with stone crab season, strawberry picking and a smorgasbord of outdoor festivals that celebrate what’s great about living here. One of my favorite fall festivals is the Fairchild Ramble, held each November at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables.
This year, Fairchild is hosting a special exhibit by acclaimed glass artist Dale Chihuly.While the Chihuly exhibit opens officially on December 3, 2005 and runs through May 31, 2006, Ramble attendees were able to get a sneak peek of these amazing works of art. It isn’t often that art and nature collide in such a spectacular way.
Arriving at the Ramble, I meandered along the garden pathway past white vendor tents selling everything from lavender sachets to Balinese crafts. Shining sea-like shapes began popping up here, there and everywhere. Jewel-toned and other worldly, these stunning glass sculptures were displayed helter-skelter among the palms, cycads, lily ponds and flowering trees. It was a surreal experience, expecting to see the usual botanical garden niceties but jolted instead by the brilliant juxtaposition of glass objets d’art with subtropical trees and shrubs.
Eight-foot stalks of ruby-colored glass sprouted in the middle of one garden patch, while floating, multi-colored glass orbs bobbed lazily throughout the garden’s various water elements like a scene from Alice in Wonderland or the Wizard of Oz. In fact, if those ruby-colored stalks were green instead of red, they’d be dead ringers for the spires of Emerald City. No, I definitely wasn’t in Kansas this particular November morn.
Behind the main Visitor Center, one of Chihuly’s famous anemone-shaped sculptures reached skyward with red and yellow tentacles. I could only guess how much this piece must weigh and how in the world they got it there in the first place. It was nearly 20 feet tall. I’d love to get a behind-the-scenes look at the installation of this show. Maybe it’s done at night by tiny faeries who pull everything into place with titanium strings? Okay, back to reality….
At a nearby pond, a weathered white dinghy sat by the water’s edge, filled to bursting with shining balls of glass, which caught and reflected the sunlight like magical buoys. Just beyond the ‘buoys’ were floating pink ice cubes, made of molded Polyvitro – a plastic polymer resin that is stronger than glass. At the Bailey Palm Glade – one of Fairchild’s most stunning vistas – resident turtles swam around two- and three-foot-wide glass onions, which the artists appropriately calls “Walla Wallas”.
This year’s Ramble seemed to have more kids’ activities than in years past. A clever scavenger hunt encouraged kids to run around identifying all of the cool Chilhuly works throughout the garden and checking them off from a list. Grown-ups – myself included – like to go on their own scavenger hunts at the Ramble, which offers a dazzling array of arts and crafts that make perfect one-of-a-kind holiday gifts. This year, I filled my goody bag with a hand-carved Buddha head from Thailand, some vintage glass beads, a wooden jewelry box crowned with a dancing monkey and some abalone shell coasters.
If I’d brought the SUV, I would have toted home a few pots of herbs and maybe a new tropical fruit tree to replace the Key lime Katrina blew down. The Ramble is one humdinger of a garden festival, and Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden is a magical place to visit any day of the year. But the Chihuly at Fairchild exhibit is one of those things that you have to see to believe.
Don’t miss it.
Helpful links:
Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden
http://search.gmcvb.com/sp?keywords=chihuly
Miami’s Tropical Attractions
http://www.gmcvb.com/visitors/tropicalattractions.asp
This year, Fairchild is hosting a special exhibit by acclaimed glass artist Dale Chihuly.While the Chihuly exhibit opens officially on December 3, 2005 and runs through May 31, 2006, Ramble attendees were able to get a sneak peek of these amazing works of art. It isn’t often that art and nature collide in such a spectacular way.
Arriving at the Ramble, I meandered along the garden pathway past white vendor tents selling everything from lavender sachets to Balinese crafts. Shining sea-like shapes began popping up here, there and everywhere. Jewel-toned and other worldly, these stunning glass sculptures were displayed helter-skelter among the palms, cycads, lily ponds and flowering trees. It was a surreal experience, expecting to see the usual botanical garden niceties but jolted instead by the brilliant juxtaposition of glass objets d’art with subtropical trees and shrubs.
Eight-foot stalks of ruby-colored glass sprouted in the middle of one garden patch, while floating, multi-colored glass orbs bobbed lazily throughout the garden’s various water elements like a scene from Alice in Wonderland or the Wizard of Oz. In fact, if those ruby-colored stalks were green instead of red, they’d be dead ringers for the spires of Emerald City. No, I definitely wasn’t in Kansas this particular November morn.
Behind the main Visitor Center, one of Chihuly’s famous anemone-shaped sculptures reached skyward with red and yellow tentacles. I could only guess how much this piece must weigh and how in the world they got it there in the first place. It was nearly 20 feet tall. I’d love to get a behind-the-scenes look at the installation of this show. Maybe it’s done at night by tiny faeries who pull everything into place with titanium strings? Okay, back to reality….
At a nearby pond, a weathered white dinghy sat by the water’s edge, filled to bursting with shining balls of glass, which caught and reflected the sunlight like magical buoys. Just beyond the ‘buoys’ were floating pink ice cubes, made of molded Polyvitro – a plastic polymer resin that is stronger than glass. At the Bailey Palm Glade – one of Fairchild’s most stunning vistas – resident turtles swam around two- and three-foot-wide glass onions, which the artists appropriately calls “Walla Wallas”.
This year’s Ramble seemed to have more kids’ activities than in years past. A clever scavenger hunt encouraged kids to run around identifying all of the cool Chilhuly works throughout the garden and checking them off from a list. Grown-ups – myself included – like to go on their own scavenger hunts at the Ramble, which offers a dazzling array of arts and crafts that make perfect one-of-a-kind holiday gifts. This year, I filled my goody bag with a hand-carved Buddha head from Thailand, some vintage glass beads, a wooden jewelry box crowned with a dancing monkey and some abalone shell coasters.
If I’d brought the SUV, I would have toted home a few pots of herbs and maybe a new tropical fruit tree to replace the Key lime Katrina blew down. The Ramble is one humdinger of a garden festival, and Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden is a magical place to visit any day of the year. But the Chihuly at Fairchild exhibit is one of those things that you have to see to believe.
Don’t miss it.
Helpful links:
Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden
http://search.gmcvb.com/sp?keywords=chihuly
Miami’s Tropical Attractions
http://www.gmcvb.com/visitors/tropicalattractions.asp
posted by Carolyn Keating at
10:54 AM
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