Background to The Galaxy Garden
The Galaxy Garden was conceived and designed by Jon Lomberg and built by him and Barbara DeFranco, Director of the Paleaku Peace Gardens Sanctuary.
 Photograph by Alex MacDonald. This is a photo of the artist inside a diorama of the Milky Way he made for the Ontario Science Center in 1975. Similar diorama galaxies were made for the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and the home of Carl Sagan. |
For many years, Jon Lomberg has been inspired by the concept of the Milky Way Galaxy, perhaps more than any other artist. |
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His presentations have appeared in many media, including his Emmy Award-winning work for Carl Sagan's TV series, COSMOS.
Click here to order a signed and numbered art print of this background painting. |
 Portrait of The Milky Way by Jon Lomberg. |
Jon's famous "Portrait of the Milky Way" was displayed for 12 years at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., in the gallery "Where Next, Columbus?".
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The Galaxy Garden is Jon Lomberg's latest, largest, and most ambitious attempt to realize the galaxy through art. Considering the galaxy as a garden is, of course, a kind of metaphor.
 Starflowers by Jon Lomberg. |
Stars are not plants, but the cycle by which stars are formed from gas and dust and time is very similar to a biological cycle. The painting "Starflowers" gives the metaphor visual life.
Click here to order a signed Giclee print of this painting. |
The hardest thing to envision about the galaxy is its sheer vastness. Pictures on a page don't do it. Even a large mural on a wall doesn't do it justice. A large garden seemed to offer better ways to suggest our place in the galaxy.
Scale models of the solar system have enabled students to understand the distances between planets in our own solar system. Such models appear in Washington, D.C., in Pasadena, California, and in the city of Peoria, Illinois, where you can bicycle your way around the Solar System.
The Galaxy Garden is, however, the first time our Milky Way galaxy has been rendered as an accurate walk-through map; a "living portrait" of our galaxy, realized as a garden.
The Galaxy Garden is located at the Paleaku Peace Gardens Sanctuary in Kona, Hawaii. This 9-acre, non-profit botanical garden contains many unique garden installations. When Jon Lomberg described his idea for the garden to Director Barbara DeFranco, she very generously offered him the site to build it. Before they had the funds to start building the garden, they originated and housed a program of public astronomy events.
NEXT... MAPPING THE MILKY WAY IN FLOWERS
