Several years ago, famed glass artist Dale Chihuly installed a number of works throughout the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, a two-acre tropical greenhouse on the near west side of the city. The Persian Pond is one work that remains at the conservatory, its brightly colored discs reminiscent of water lilies.According to Chihuly’s Web site:
In the Garfield Park Conservatory context, the blossoms on the Persian Pond evoke Claude Monet's gardens in Giverny. They are a witty inversion of Monet's transplantation of real water lilies to a pretend Japanese garden based in turn on the Japanese woodcuts that inspired Monet's paintings. Chihuly's brilliant yellow forms, on the other hand, reflect real light and color, as opposed to translating them into highlights on canvas. This triple inversion, with its multiple implicit referents, lends the Persian Pond installation particular piquancy.
I guess my interest was piqued as I saw the glass blossoms on the tropical pond with curious koi swimming among the reflections of the glass discs.
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