and then there was glass...

In celebration of my recently achieved candidacy status, i took the day off to drive up to corning, NY with my good friend Pamela (with child) to check out the Corning Glass Museum and in particular, the Botanical Wonder exhibit highlighting the incredible, intricate and botanically accurate work of Leopold Blaschka and his son.

Picture above - a super cool hands on exhibit about glass and optical allusion.


If you haven't seen or read about it - it's worth your time. Here is an overview.
Their work started with deep sea inverts...


Until one botanist realized the potential application of intricate glass work to the growing field of botany.



spectacular.



In short, if you don't feel like reading about it - they made flowers, and invertebrates, and modeled what diseased forms looked like. The challenges involved with studying real organic material are great as keeping it in tact in its true form and color is nearly impossible. Glass provided and excellent way to examine, understand and study organic forms as they would be found in nature.



Other exhibits at the exam included pieces by chihuly and others... and hands on exhibits demonstrating the many uses of and evolution of various properties of glass...


I found this one a bit disturbing - perhaps a grim commentary on suburbia.



towards the end of the day we signed up for a workshop. i made a flower and a new friend as one of the guys working the workshop was our age (not pictured)...


Take careful note of my awesome outfit.



my flower came out beautiful! it's on my kitchen ledge... a reminder of an amazing day with a great friend.