Art at the island — and one for your own garden.
DICHROIC GLASS · MADE ONE AT A TIME · DESIGNED WITH YOU · SET IN PLACE BY HAND
Commissions
The one on 10th Avenue had to survive a median.
Yours doesn't.
That piece was made quickly, for a traffic island, out of whatever would take a New York winter and whatever else the street had in mind. It did its job — people stopped, and then people started asking where to get one.
What we're making now is the piece we would have made if it were never going to live between a bike lane and four lanes of traffic. Dichroic glass. A base made properly and finished for where it stands. Something that belongs in a garden you actually own, and is still there in ten years.
Each one is commissioned rather than ordered — we work out scale, the glass, the base and how it behaves after dark before anything is made. And we set it in place ourselves, which is why we ask for a zip code.
In a private garden
Commissions openBright all day. Lit from within after dark.
A gazing ball is an old idea — something mirrored, set on a pedestal in a garden, there to catch the light and hold the whole place in one small reflection. This is that idea, taken seriously.
Through the day the dichroic glass does the work. It shifts through gold, magenta, violet and cyan as you move past it, so it is never quite the same twice, and in low morning and late-afternoon light it throws color onto whatever is beside it — gravel, a path, a wall, the underside of leaves.
After dark it can light from within, holding the eye once the garden has gone quiet. How that works is one of the things we'd settle with you.
It suits a spot you walk past rather than a bed you look at from a distance: the turn of a path, the end of a terrace, a courtyard corner, the sight line from a kitchen window. It wants light through the day and darkness around it at night.
The commission
What we'd decide together.
Nothing here comes off a shelf. Each piece is drawn around the place it's going to stand, so the conversation comes before the making.
- Scale
- Height and proportion set against the space — the planting around it, the sight lines into it, and how closely you'll pass. A terrace and a walled garden want very different pieces.
- The glass
- Dichroic glass reads as a different color depending on where you're standing and where the light is coming from. There's real range in how warm or cool that shift runs, and we'd choose it with the garden in mind.
- The base
- Made and finished for the site rather than supplied as one standard part — set into planting, standing on stone, or sitting on a terrace where weight and footprint matter.
- After dark
- Whether it lights at night, how brightly, and how it's powered. This depends on the site more than on preference, and it's worth walking through properly.
- Siting
- Where it stands, what it faces, what it catches, and what it throws color onto. Often the most consequential decision of the lot, and the one people expect to matter least.
- Installation
- Ours. We deliver it, set it, and stay long enough to see it in the light it will actually live in.
"You will spot Itty Island first by its gazing ball."
High Line 28 Block Association
It found an audience well beyond the block, too. Shared on r/GuerrillaGardening and r/streetart, the island and its gazing ball picked up more than 13,000 upvotes and 700 shares — and a lot of people asking the same question you might be.
Register interest
Tell us where it would go.
No commitment and nothing to pay. We'll come back to you to talk through scale, options and cost — and we'll be straight with you about timing and whether we can reach you.