May 2008 FRONT PAGE

“Planting” The Aquarium

Holley Midgley

Quick. What’s the first word that comes to mind when you hear “Tennessee Aquarium”? Chances are that it’s something like “fish,” “water,” or even “fun.” But if you are Christine Bock, it’s probably “plants.” Ms. Bock is lead horticulturist for the facility; “planting” the aquarium is what she does.

Thanks to Christine and her fellow staffers and volunteers, the plants at the Tennessee Aquarium make the exhibits come alive. When you’re looking at the fish and other animals in their displays, it’s almost like you’re seeing them in their home environments; that’s the whole idea. It’s as if their native habitat has somehow been scooped out of the Amazon, the Smoky’s, the Caribbean, or the river delta and miraculously transported to Chattanooga and put on display. It didn’t happen overnight. And it turns out that making an aquarium exhibit look like a mirror image of the real thing takes an incredible amount of hard work, not to mention technical expertise.

Ms. Bock earned a bachelors degree in environmental sciences. Not satisfied with that level of knowledge, she went on to earn a masters degree in the same field. “I wanted to know everything I could about the biology of trees. They’re going to be living in a building, and that presents a lot of challenges for them,” she points out. She is also a certified arborist, a tree “expert” if you will. She’s been regularly leading nature walks around Chattanooga and in the Smoky Mountains for 15 years.

The Tennessee Aquarium (TA, for short) was originally planned by the same firm that designed the famed National Aquarium, in Baltimore, as well as Japan’s Ring of Fire Aquarium. Christine was one of the first people hired at TA. Everyday during the year that led up to its opening she would strap on a hard hat and walk seven blocks from her office to the TA building site to work on the plants. Virtually every exhibit has plants, logs, mosses, or other little natural touches that make them spring to life. An Arizona company created impressive man made coral reefs, hand painted to look like the reefs off Galveston, Texas. Using molds, they also made impressions of rocks in the Smokys, and painted life-like mosses and lichens on them to resemble the real thing. Over time, and with a great deal of patience, Christine has even managed to transplant real mosses onto the fake rocks. Staff from places like the Cincinnati Zoo have been startled to see how well the mosses have done. Other touches, like old rotting logs, carefully placed leaf litter and lichen-encrusted twigs, and plants growing on little ledges, all contribute to the feeling that one is looking at the real thing.

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Blowin’ (glass) in the Wind

Holley Midgley

High atop Lookout Mountain, where the wind eases through lofty pines just a stones throw from Little River Canyon, a young man named Cal Breed is creating masterpieces of the glass blower’s art. From Orbix Hot Glass, his studio in Cherokee County, Alabama Cal works with what he describes as frozen light- glass. It can be unforgiving, tricky, and often dangerous, since when it’s hot it’s 2,000 degrees, and when it’s not it’s sharp. Some of his work is functional: pitchers, plates, bowls, and jewelry, for instance. But the function of some of his art is to simply be appreciated for its grace and beauty; it is to be enjoyed for its own sake.

Cal had dreams of being a marine biologist, ala Jacques Cousteau, as he was growing up in Florence, Alabama. His mother was a painter and his father a chemical engineer, both useful things to have in your lineage if you’re a glass blower. After nearly four years at Auburn University, he realized that instead of swimming with dolphins, he would need to be spending a lot of time in labs. He lost his enthusiasm, but took a stained glass class and made a life changing discovery. He saw a picture of a man spinning out glass from the end of a pipe. Suddenly he detoured onto a new life path.

While at Auburn he had also become a serious rock climbing enthusiast, spending almost every weekend at Little River Canyon scaling cliff walls. “It’s a remarkable feeling to be climbing up a wall, and to look over your shoulder and see a huge canyon below with a river raging through it. I was really taken by this area,” he fondly remembers. But for the time being, he temporarily filed away his love for the mountain and set about finding someone to teach him more about the art of glass blowing. That led him to the studio of Cam Langley, in Birmingham. At first Langley had no interest is taking the time to teach someone else, and essentially told Cal to take a hike. (Good thing he didn’t tell him to go climb a mountain). But, Cal returned the next day, and the next. Eventually, Langley relented and allowed Cal to use his tools. And he gave Cal the opportunity to experiment with the material and to grow. They became good friends as well.

Abandoning a plan to open his own studio in Birmingham, even though its big population offered a lot of prospective customers, Cal relocated to Lookout Mountain near some property owned by his in-laws, and within striking distance of the Canyon. His combination workshop and showroom gallery sits under the shade of whispering pines. He can amble to work from his house. And he and his wife Christy and their three children can take walks down the little lane that leads to the river. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Cal believes it’s the perfect atmosphere for being creative. “My work has always been inspired by a quiet time in the woods,” he says.

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