How does your garden grow?

Mark Alden Branch ’86

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Mark Alden Branch ’86

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For two months, this summer into fall, the dome of the Schwarzman Center became Celestial Garden (Yale), a mesmerizing site-specific creation by artist Leo Villareal ’90. Members of the Yale and wider New Haven communities were invited (free of charge) to lie back on a cushy carpet, or a comfy chair, to watch an ever-changing garden of shapes and colors dancing on the domed ceiling; computer-generated tones offered what Villareal describes as a “link between visual and auditory.”

“It’s not prescriptive like so much technology,” says Villareal. “There is no beginning, middle, and end; the viewer doesn’t feel like they have missed anything. There is no ‘go here, buy that.’ It’s creating a more open-ended experience. I hope it elicits a sense of joy.”

Villareal had a more prosaic experience of the domed room as an undergraduate, in the days when it was the Yale Banner office. “I remember going to get my yearbook photo taken there.”