DALE CHILUHY AT THE ATLANTIS CASINO

As I wrote in my last post we toured fantastic Atlantis during our port stop in Nassau, Bahamas. Part of the tour included a walk through the famous Atlantis Casino.

It is here that we saw four exquisite glass sculptures by the artist, Dale Chihuly, that were commissioned specifically for the casino by the owner of Atlantis, Sol Kerzner. Our tour guide informed us the glass sculptures are the only thing that you can photograph in the casino.

The gorgeous Temple of the Moon, consists of over 900 separate pieces of cobalt blue and opalescent white glass.

Its counterpart, Temple of the Sun, has more than 2,300 yellow, orange, and red elements radiating from a fiery globe atop a replica of a Mayan temple.

The magnificent Seaform chandelier is made up of over 900 sealife forms of jellyfish, anemones, squid, and seaweed in delicate shades highlighted with silver and gold. It took Chihuly only three weeks to create. Measuring approximately 10 feet by 12 feet, it hangs over the High Rollers area of the casino.

Dale Chihuly describes making the Crystal Gate sculpture: "Sol (Sol Kerzner, developer of the Atlantis resort) came to my Seattle studio many times over the following nine months, and after viewing the beginnings of the moon and the sun he told me about a crystal gate he planned at the entrance to the casino. He wanted to use real crystals, and the piece would be about six feet high. But then he decided that the scale wouldn't be monumental enough for the space, and asked me how I might do the piece in glass. Of all the pieces for Atlantis, the Crystal Gate was the most challenging and difficult. We redid it about five times before we could make glass and armature work together. Finally, I set about making an eighteen-foot-high Crystal Gate out of 3,100 hand-blown crystals."

 

Each one of these glass sculptures is valued at approximately $1,000,000.

For more information visit http://www.chihuly.com/.

All photos in this blog post were taken by me during our visit to Atlantis in May, 2013.