Chihuly sculptures mingle with nature at Cheekwood

The Sun, with its 15-foot radius and thousand-plus pieces, and Saffron Tower, a 30-foot-tall construction of yellow-gold neon tubes, command a lot of attention in the new Chihuly at Cheekwood exhibition. It's the smaller, subtler pieces, however, that leave viewers with a sense of Dale Chihuly's mastery of integrating glass into landscape.

Cheekwood's mix of rolling hills, trees and numerous pathways allows for intriguing glimpses of the Chihuly works long before they are reached.

Circling around the Saffron Tower, for example, viewers catch a first peek at the Popsicle-colored Walla Wallas floating in the Robinson Family Water Garden below. Seen up close from water's edge, the bulbous forms share obvious similarities with a variety of onion grown in the eastern Washington state city for which the floating pieces were named.

Niijima Floats in the pristinely raked gravel of the Japanese Garden are reminiscent of Andy Goldworthy's natural sculpture. Named after a Japanese village and inspired by the small glass balls used in the fishermen's nets, the large, hollow floats look like oversized marbles and weigh up to 45 pounds.

Many of Chihuly's signature forms are derived from nature, based on reeds, herons and even glacial-like chunks of ice (made of Polyvitro, a plastic material Chihuly uses when a material lighter than glass is required). But even the most fantastical shapes - like the riotous collection of straight and spiky or curved and flared tubes filling a boat anchored in one of the ponds - bear some relation to botanical forms.

Red Bamboo Reeds are interspersed in tall stalks of bamboo along a pathway (the first time they have ever been mixed with the real thing), while the slender, bird-like Silvered Purple Herons plays off the color of the lily pads in the Herb Garden fountain. The "heavy earth" element erbium gives Erbium Fiori its pink-champagne hue, which also matches the pine needles beneath the piece.

Floating on water, nestled amidst plants or sticking into the earth, Chihuly's creations fit into Cheekwood's grounds in a way that is at once organic and spectacular. His work forms a symbiotic relationship with the surroundings and inspires viewers to reflect on the connection between art and nature.

See more of Cheekwood at their website www.cheekwood.org