2017 Summer

Chihuly’s outdoor gardens feature a totally complementary blend of leafy green shapes and color-drenched glass - including a spherical yellow and orange sun shining brightly in the center of everything.

excursion for gardening enthusiasts and nature lovers who want to visit Southeast Alaska’s rainforest. Fortunately, the gardens (open May through September) are readily accessible for travelers with limited mobility. To learn more about Glacier Gardens Rainforest Adventure, visit www.glaciergardens.com/. Chihuly Garden and Glass Next up on our great gardens circuit is the widely acclaimed Chihuly Garden and Glass, adjacent to the Space Needle at Seattle Center in downtown Seattle, Washington. Artist Dale Chihuly is a native son of Washington State. His wildly popular 1.5 acre Seattle exhibit intermixes Pacific Northwestern plants and trees with his signature glassworks. Chihuly offers visitors a visual feast as he makes use of every lively color, shape, texture, and size imaginable. Chihuly Garden and Glass includes a showpiece glass house with suspended floral sculpture, eight individual indoor galleries featuring Chihuly’s diverse and dazzling glass creations, plus a gracefully landscaped, color infused outdoor garden. While Dale Chihuly’s glass artistry always incorporates brilliant colors and extraordinary textures, his stylistic

interests have shifted with each passing decade. Chihuly was fascinated with cylinders and baskets during the ‘70s, seaforms and Venetians in the ‘80s, floats and chandeliers during the ‘90s, and so on. His widely acclaimed glass art appears in 200-plus museums throughout the world. And Chihuly’s commitment to promoting art in his home state is evidenced by his partnering programs with Seattle Public Schools as well as several non-profit community organizations. Chihuly’s indoor Seattle exhibit contains an entire wall of woven blankets that reflects his passion for Native American cultures and crafts. In another room, one of his luminous blue and gold glass sculptures swims with fantastic sea-life elements. Vibrant splashes of color and shape are everywhere, even inside the transparent ceiling of a walkway that connects two galleries. The exhibit’s standout 40-foot-high Glasshouse draws all eyes upward to a 100-foot-long suspended floral strand with vivid shades of yellow, gold, orange, and red glass. Colors streaming down through the overhead structure change remarkably, depending on the sunlight’s intensity and time of day. Chihuly’s outdoor garden plot presents complementary blends of leafy green shapes and color-drenched glass

PACIFIC NORTHWEST GARDENS

COAST TO COAST SUMMER MAGAZINE 2017

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