Chihuly Glass and Garden

On Monday Hubby and I went on a field trip with Mark and Karen to Seattle.  We went to see the Chihuly Garden and Glass at Seattle Center.  After parking downtown, we took the monorail to the Seattle Center.

Dale Chihuly, a local artist,  uses the Puget Sound, Native American art and photos, flowers, plants and his collections for inspiration.  

 A museum docent took our photo, gave us a card and told us to scan the card at a kiosk, we could then email the photos to ourselves.  It was included in the admission price and I thought it was a nice touch.

Dale Chihuly doesn't blow glass anymore because of physical limitations but he draws, paints and designs the installations.  His drawing are included in some of the exhibits.

 I loved the ceiling installation.  I wanted to lay on the floor and just rest.

 We moved on to the indoor garden and wow it was stunning.

 The wood boat filled with floats was beautiful as was the one filled with sea life.

 After the indoor exhibit we went out to the gardens, leaving the building through the conservatory.  It was inspired by Chihuly's collection of conservatory vintage postcards.  They were enlarged, framed and on the wall.  

Karen is planning a party.  It would be fantastic to party here and it is possible.  We asked a docent for an estimate of cost.  To reserve the entire exhibit and garden it is $70,000+.  There was a wedding held on Saturday evening.  They reserved it in its entirety and had Collections provide the catering and open bar at an additional cost.  And yes, the open bar did make museum staff nervous.

 The next two photos are my self portraits at the exhibit and in the garden.  The second one is my reflection in the ball.  We stopped at the gift shop as we were leaving and they were selling a postcard that was similar, of course, I wasn't in that photo.

After viewing the garden we had lunch at Collections, an on site restaurant featuring Chihuly's collections.  Each of the tables features a collection.  Our table was vintage toy travel trailers.  Oh my!  I need to collect those.  There were accordions hanging from the ceiling, framed collections and of course, the tables.  Our food was delicious too.

We enjoyed small plates at Dragonfish and then shopped our way home.  It was a wonderful day!

* This post has many photos but it's a fraction of what I took.  I did not use a flash as I felt the flashes going off around me were very intrusive.  I set my little point and shoot camera on the flower setting, turned the flash off and held it low, and against my leg to keep the camera still for most of the photos.  I didn't know what I would actually get until I had taken the photo.