You never really know when you’ll see some type of decorative glass display … it just shows up when you least expect it. Sometimes it’s a purple glass wall and other times a sandblasted entrance. There have been glass countertops and floors, and even large-scale decorative glass sculptures. When it comes to sculptural glass work the possibilities are endless; just name it and someone may just create it (if they have not already).

I had such an encounter a couple of weeks ago. I was walking through the sculpture garden at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and decided to stroll through the Cowles Conservatory. I was wandering through, taking in the beauty of all the plants and flowers when suddenly there was a giant glass fish standing before me (yes, a fish).

I stood there a moment, taken aback a bit … is that really a giant glass fish? I pondered this to myself and then said out load, “I do believe that’s glass.” A few steps closer and I saw that indeed it was.

Created by world-renowned architect and artist Frank Gehry, the title of the sculpture was simple “Standing Glass Fish.” Constructed of glass, wood, steel, silicone, plexiglass and rubber, the sculpture, created in 1986, stands 22-feet tall and is suspended on invisible supports over a rectangular lily pond and surrounded by palm trees.

Gehry’s comment about the sculpture reads: “In Toronto, when I was very young, my grandmother and I used to go to Kensington, a Jewish market, on Thursday morning. She would buy a carp for gefilte fish. She’d put it in the bathtub, fill the bathtub with water, and this big black carp–two or three feet long–would swim around in the bathtub and I would play with it. I would stand up there and watch it turn and twist . . . and then she’d kill it and make gefilte fish and that was always sad and awful and ugly.”–Frank Gehry

You can also read more about the sculpture here.

Decorative glass, art glass, sculptural glass – if you’ve got a story to share about an interesting example you’ve seen or worked on please share it.