Orchid Daze:
Reflections
in Bloom
Orchid Daze returns to the Fuqua Orchid Center Feb. 14 – April 14 featuring collage works by Atlanta Artist Lillian Blades.
About the Exhibition
Orchid Daze, the Garden’s annual celebration of its signature plant collection, blooms this winter with a dazzling exhibition by Atlanta artist Lillian Blades’ mixed media works set amongst a lush, colorful flowering landscape.
The works complement three strikingly different orchid landscapes in the Fuqua Conservatory Lobby, Orchid Center Atrium and Orchid Center Display House. The warm colors of the Caribbean will dominate the lobby with exquisite Epidendrums, slipper orchids and dancing lady orchids that complement the color palette of her art. The architectural centerpiece of the atrium will be a domed gazebo framed by jewel-toned orchid curtains and surrounded by Blades’ sparkling collages. In the Orchid Display House, bold Vanda and Phalaenopsis columns will appear on a raised stage framed by a proscenium of Blades’ work and against a backdrop of her collages.
About the Artist
“Light plays an important part of the work. I love how it bounces, how it goes through the materials and creates a stained glass effect with color,” Lillian Blades said in an interview. “I love the fact that you can see through it, you can move around it, almost like a wall, but treating it in a way like a painting, thinking of color, value, texture, the reflective qualities, the transparency of it.”
Blades’s work is influenced by her childhood home in The Bahamas, her ancestral background of West Africa and her late mother, who was a seamstress. These influences appear through her use of color and objects that evoke memory and history.
Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions, and in public and private commissions in the United States as well as The Bahamas, Trinidad, Germany and South Africa. She received the Excellence in Arts award from The Bahamas Consulate in Atlanta and was named Visual Artist of the Year by the National Black Arts Festival.
About the Collection
The Atlanta Botanical Garden is home to one of the largest orchid collections at any public garden in the world.
All year, countless orchids are displayed in two specific climate zones inside the Fuqua Orchid Center: the Tropical High Elevation House and the Orchid Display House. Some are brought from on-site greenhouses for display while in bloom. Others are permanently installed to illustrate a more naturalistic growth on trees and structures.
Fuqua Orchid Center
Tropical High Elevation House
The Orchid Center Blog
The Fuqua Orchid Center showcases the Garden’s renowned collection of orchids in 16,000 sq. ft. of indoor landscapes and seasonal displays. Go behind the scenes with The Orchid Column.
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