Bursting with blossoms and fruits like an exploded cornucopia, Charlotta Westergren’s chandeliers resemble the distinct elements of a still life brought to sculptural life and scattered into the air.

Born in Sweden and working in Brooklyn, Westergren is drawn to the exuberant still lifes of seventeenth-century Flanders — those studio-created bouquets that juxtapose flowers and fruits that would never bloom together. She celebrates that same quiet magic in the materiality of the everyday.

Combining “high” and “low” in her Gardening series, she works with the simple, industrial language of brass tubing and scavenged glass. Decorative objects once popular in 1960s and 70s middle-class homes — glass fruits, pressed flowers — are transformed into sources of joy. What was once considered “out of style” and “déclassé” becomes chic and upcycled.

That spirit extends to the tiny glass bees that hover on gilded wire among the fruits and flowers. Busy and delicate, they remind us of both fertility in the cycle of life and the endless cycles of creativity in the artistic endeavor.

How they’re made — Process   About the artist →