Desert Botanical Garden: Sonoran Light

 

Garden entrance: Chihuly structures at dusk

 

We just got back from Tempe, AZ, where we spent three days immersed in baseball spring training. As usual, we had a good time attending games and eating the local cuisine. (Click here for past spring training trips.) But, for me, this year's highlight was seeing "Sonoran Light," an evening art installation at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. The artist, Bruce Munro, uses common recycled items and fiber-optic lights to create luminescent sculptures that change colors and engage the viewer. The most spectacular piece, called "Field of Light," features some 30,000 spheres (recycled Christmas ornaments?) illuminating the Garden Butte hillside, flowing, like lava, into the Sonoran Desert Nature Loop Trail. In the dark, "Field of Light," in particular, seemed to go on for miles and was absolutely breath-taking.

Although "Field of Light" was impossible to capture with our cameras, we did manage to take some good photos of the other exhibits (click on images to enlarge):

"Water Towers," made with recycled water bottles

 

"Water Towers" detail 

 

Tim standing in front of a geodesic dome made of

water bottles

 

Dome detail

 

Enormous "Chindi" mobile with moon (left)

 

"Eden Bloom" with cactus in the background

 

A second "Eden Bloom"

 

A tiny portion of "Field of Light"

We also, of course, got to experience the garden's less flashy residents at night, enhancing the desert's dark mystery.

 

Boojum tree, a Garden favorite

 

Majestic saguaro

For more information about "Sonoran Light" and/or the Botanical Garden, please watch: