Nikolaj Christensen Rocks (And So Do His Snails)

Yesterday we went with my mom and my sister Elizabeth to Phipps Conservatory. My mom celebrated her birthday this past week and she wanted to see the Fall Flower Show before her membership expired and the Laurel Highlands froze over for the winter. (My parents live in Somerset County, so it’s a big deal for them to travel to things in the Pittsburgh area once winter hits the mountains.)

This is the first time that I have blogged about Phipps for over a year, but we still enjoy visiting several times each year. Among the things that we enjoyed on recent visits were glass snails on obelisks created by Nikolaj Christensen. Yesterday, towards the end of our visit, Jonathan and I saw a Phipps associate walking away with one of the snails. Jonathan said, “Aww, poor snail,” thinking that it had broken. The associate explained that the artist was dismantling his exhibit. Jonathan rushed to the disappearing exhibit so that he could tell the artist how much we have enjoyed seeing it on previous visits. To our surprise, the artist gave us one of the pieces to take home!

Thank you, Mr. Christensen! We staged it on a chair in our dining room for this
photo; however, we plan to put it in our garden next spring. We will be sure to post a photo when we do so.

The snail acquisition happened towards the end of our visit. We saw many cool things at Phipps yesterday. Here are some photos that I (Jenny) took:

I included this picture because Jonathan had me go to the outdoor garden with him to see the dahlias.