while i was in san francisco, i received notices in my email from the new york botanical garden about their new exhibit of dale chihuly sculptures. greg and i decided to visit this morning. between 9 and 10 am on saturday mornings, visitors can enter free of charge (there's also plenty of parking that early in the morning on the street outside of the garden grounds). we ran the last hundred feet to the entrance kiosk, as it was five or four minutes to ten, and i knew they would charge us if we arrived a minute over.
above is sol del citrón, 2014, blown glass and steel.
novelist jacqueline woodson, whose book another brooklyn i just
read, selected poems from hundreds of submissions from tri-state area
school children, grades k-12, inspired by chihuly's work:
sol del citrón
sol
spirals like the way dance makes my hips move left and right
overjoy people's faces with the vibrant colors, allusions
loops like the way natural hair does in its natural state bouncy and coily
del
dazzles you with brightness that may blind your eyes in a snap of a hand
exquisite like the sparkles sparkling on a disco ball
luxurious for everyone to enjoy going beyond what they can imagine
citrón
curves like the way a worm slithers back into its habitat
injects you with freedom into a new world like chihuly
ties all the pieces together to make it unique
rams all the ideas, differences in your mind that it suddenly goes "poof"
ongoing into my brain was first a little thing that wasn't possible
now it's a large scale glass curling sculpture.
sol del citrón
by essence sanders
eighth grade
harlem academy
new york, new york
red reeds on logs, blown glass and logs, 2016
sapphire star
beautiful sea urchin
sea urchin, sea urchin
that spiny sea urchin
you're made out of glass
you live in the sea.
you are as blue as the water,
so stay with me.
by sophia pietrzak
kindergarten
katonah elementary school
katonah, new york
nikko fir tree from japan
blown glass balls in a rowboat
entering the rose garden . .
we also walked through the old growth forest (the largest uncut expanse of new york's original wooded landscape), and the herb garden. but always the highlight for me at the nybg are the ornamental conifers . . spruce trees, cedar trees . . even a few redwoods. they're all enormous and beautiful.
