Dale Chihuly at the Denver Botanic Gardens

Dale Chihuly is a very well-known artist who uses glass as his medium–spectacular, smooth, elegant, explosive, psycho-colorful, environmental, massive, impossible, collections of glass. In the Denver gardens, his work is now nicely integrated into the landscape of plants, trees, grasses, and ponds. A veritable feast of dandy delight for the artistic eye, you might say…or might not (more on that in a moment).

The exhibit has been extremely popular. Indeed, when we went (on a Sunday), there was barely elbow room between the many, many human beans to pass through the pathways between his various works. Judging from the comments of visitors, most were quite impressed…but not all (and I’ll get to that in a moment).

There were many photographers there as well, from the amateur to the pro, loaded with every conceivable type of camera, lens, monopod, tripod, video machine and so on. Chihuly’s work is nothing if not extremely photogenic. If you went, and you made pictures, they might look something like this…

Chihuly, #1. Denver Botanic Gardens, Colorado, 2014

Or this…

Chihuly, #3. Denver Botanic Gardens, Colorado, 2014

Or even this…

Chihuly, #4. Denver Botanic Gardens, Colorado, 2014

My eye tended to wander, though, and after one last color image–this one of the inside of an empty plant pot…

Blue Flow. Denver Botanic Gardens, Colorado, 2014

…I moved on to black and white, looking for interesting patterns. Like this…

Lily Pad, #10. Denver Botanic Gardens, Colorado, 2014

And this…

Palm, #7. Denver Botanic Gardens, Colorado, 2014

And even this…

Shadows and Shapes. Denver Botanic Gardens, Colorado, 2014

While there, I even managed to make a “street photography” image I really like. This picture made me think of images done by the urban and war correspondents of the previous century, thus the title…

Madrid, 1936. Denver Botanic Gardens, Colorado, 2014

So, don’t just focus your lens on Chihuly’s glass–there are other interesting subjects awaiting your memory card there in the gardens.

Now, I mentioned above that not all thought the Chihuly exhibit was to their taste. Art is nothing if not subjective. To get there, however, I first need to explain a funny little slang term sometimes facetiously used in the Spanish language: un pongo.

The word is derived from the verb poner, which means “to put” or “to place”. Thus pongo would mean “I put”. Spanish speakers may turn this word into an adjective, though…Thus, un pongo becomes a physical object that must be put somewhere. For example, you might receive a Christmas or birthday present that you don’t really know what to do with–we might call it a “knick-knack” in English, something you might put on your shelf somewhere as a passive adornment. This, then, is un pongo. As in ¿Dónde lo pongo? (“Where do I put it?”).

“What did you get for your birthday from Aunt Matilda?” Nada…sólo un pongo.

Back to the Chihuly exhibit. Yes, it is colorful. Yes, it is unique, even spectacular. Yes, it is gracefully and professionally executed. But, in the end as my art critic would say, it is but a collection of giant pongos. Very pretty pongos gigantes, lacking deeper levels of meaning or social commentary.

OK, that is just one dissenting opinion from someone for whom the novelty of it quickly wore off. The majority of folks loved it and you probably will, too.

So go. See if Chihuly’s exhibit speaks to you. Don’t go on a weekend, though, if you want to avoid the crowds of human beans. Consider going late in the day so you can see his works by sunlight, but then you can watch the transformation as they come alive with wonderfully-done night illumination.  And go before the exhibit closes at the end of the day on November 30, 2014.