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Issue: 1137 Date: 6/7/2012
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Lantern festival sheds light on St. Louis nights
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This summer, 26 mammoth Chinese lantern installations will light up the night at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.
"Lantern Festival: Art by Day, Magic by Night" features pieces up to three stories tall, made with steel frames and more than 28,000 yards of colorful silk.
The festival is among the largest of its kind in the United States.
"This is the biggest event, not just in the number of sets, but also the size of the sets," said Spencer Tan, owner of LanternFest, the company building the installations. "In addition, we added movement, music and smoke effects."
In China, lantern festivals are on the 15th day of the Chinese New Year calendar. They signify peace, harmony and the importance of family.
The exhibition marks the end of the Missouri Botanical Garden's 25-year "Flora of China" research project, which cataloged thousands of Chinese plants in a multi-volume encyclopedia.
"We wanted to find a way to celebrate this neat behind-the-scenes achievement," said Karen Hill, public information officer for the garden.
Each of the exhibition's 26 installations alludes to elements of Chinese culture. "Zodiac Lanterns" depicts the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac. Visitors are welcomed to the exhibition by an illuminated gold dragon, 137 feet long, that honors the zodiac's Year of the Dragon.
"The welcome dragon was literally stopping traffic while we were testing it," Hill said. "We're hoping that's just an inkling of how excited people will be when they see all of these 26 sets lit."
Other show-stoppers include "Lotus Ponds," a large, spinning vase surrounded by 8-foot-tall stems of lotus flowers, and "Heavenly Temple," a three-story installation that mimics the Beijing Heavenly Temple constructed in 1420.
"The First Emperor's Quest for Immortality" tells the story of emperor Qin Shi Huang, who feared death and sought a magic elixir that would give him eternal life.
Several of the installations are made from recycled materials rather than silk. One is "Porcelain Dragon," made with 40,000 pieces of blue-and-white porcelain dishware and spoons, all tied together with kite string.
"The Porcelain Dragon is my favorite and the most challenging one," Tan said. "It has the most intricate work to be done first before it can be tied up on the framework."
The exhibition also includes a sailboat made from 4,600 plastic water bottles and a pair of creatures made from glass medicine bottles filled with dyed water.
The festival also includes an Asian bazaar, on-site demonstrations by traditional Chinese artisans and a food court that showcases the flavors of Asia.
All 26 installations will be disassembled after the exhibition rather than going on tour. Each piece was custom-designed for the 79-acre Missouri Botanical Garden landscape. And, while the silk is treated to endure weather conditions, it does eventually deteriorate.
"It's just exciting for us to be able to expose visitors to something they wouldn't normally get to see," Hill said. "That's part of our duty as a cultural attraction, and we're delighted that we had a good reason to have this public celebration. It definitely has real meaning for us." |
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