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Dragonfly Lake
At Dragonfly Lake, two vibrant public installations that float upon the water brings life to the scenic site.
Float Boat, Chihuly’s 2014 creation that’s part of his unique
Boats collection, is a colourful mixture of glass forms that are scattered and spilling out of the actual boat. Chihuly first chanced upon this concept in Nuutajärvi, Finland. After tossing his newly-created glass pieces into the river as a test, the spherical pieces began floating downstream and were collected by local teenagers in wooden boats. The experience inspired the glassblower to recreate the look and has remained a firm concept in Chihuly’s exhibits ever since.
Brad Davis and Janis Provisor were already established artists and in their late 40s, when they established their luxury carpets business, Fort Street Studio. Inspired by their passion for Chinese art, and a year-long immersion in the silk-making and woodcut-printing traditions of Hangzhou’s artisans and factories, they set out to weave their own water-coloured dreams into breathtakingly beautiful rugs that now grace the homes of Hollywood celebrities and designer boutiques around the world.
Painterly designs on rugs may be commonplace today, but it was Fort Street Studio that pioneered the aesthetic. Davis and Provisor were also the ones who painstakingly translated the ancient weaving process of hand-knotted silk they learned from Hangzhou, which is in a manner that is the same as that of the oldest rugs in the world, only modernised for today.