Most people would combine a trip to Chihuly Glass and Garden with other attractions at Seattle Center, such as the Experience Music Project, Pacific Science Center, or an event. As I said in Enumclaw Daytrips #5, combining the Great Wheel and Chihuly is for people fascinated by shapes, and the free forms of Chihuly contrast sharply with the geometry of the Great Wheel. So does the seeming contradiction of inert glass mimicking life among real growing specimens in a garden. The imaginative forms suggest the feel of a garden and enhance your perception of plants by straining it.
The impressionism of the garden turns abstract as you move indoors. Here the pieces don't represent anything--all you have is color and shape. But those colors combine in ways you never thought possible, in forms that flow like--well--glass.
A big surprise for us were pieces from Chihuly's collections. Native American art greatly impacted his work, and he has been acquiring Indian baskets for much of his life. Exquisite examples were on display, as well as a set of original Native American lithographs by the legendary Seattle photographer Edward Curtis. (These prints were especially interesting to us as we had just read Timothy Egan's biography of Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher.)
Since Patch currently puts pictures in random order, you can play the game of "What's the Intended Sequence Here?" again.