Moon

Dale Chihuly’s Moon is made from glass. Currently on display at Cheekwood museum in Nashville, the Moon is the centerpiece in a planetary display. Since I saw the Moon at night I was able to visually compare it to the real moon. Of course, the real moon is grey but still shares the same varying shadows that Chihuly’s Moon does.

Van Gogh’s The Starry Night also depicts a surreal night sky with varying shades of blue. The mystical mystery of the night is portrayed in his varying ‘plates’ of blues and whites that are welded together to form a sphere. At Cheekwood, the Moon is placed behind a foreground filled with different color basketball-sized glass globes representing different planets. The swirls on the ‘plates’ reminded me immediately of The Starry Night and the swirls Van Gogh used in his paintings to depict the wind during the night and the movement of the night’s sky.

I haven’t seen many glass arts but Chihuly used the random bends and twists of glass to his advantage to make beautiful sculptures. Chihuly has a variety of subjects of astronomy to vegetables. I was impressed the most by Chihuly’s Moon because of its lighting display and the other glass globes that were places around it.