Spent a chilly winter day exploring the Imagine Museum in downtown St. Petersburg this past weekend. Not only was it a perfect respite from the weather but it was a sensational experience.

The museum is the brainchild of Trish Dugan (a glass artist) who spent decades acquiring glass from influential artists around the world. There are over 1500 pieces in the collection, and it’s still growing.

I have some familiarity with glass art; my sister designs stained glass, I toured Dale Chihuly’s “The Nature of Glass” exhibit with her and my aunt, and the Oregon coast town where I lived is famous for the local, handcrafted glass floats.

Even with those experiences I was blown away by the creativity on display. I am naturally drawn toward items styled in a more natural bent and, of course, ones in shades of blue. The hyper-realism of Matthew Eskuche’s Trashglass series gave me pause, what a disposable world we live in.

The display that absolutely mesmerized me was Portal Icosahedron by Anthony James. It is a modern recreation of a mathematical experiment in unity by Plato, “twenty identical triangular facets…an ideal compositional system of perfect symmetry in three dimensions.” Every step I took around the piece offered a completely different view.

Looking down into a seemingly infinite portal I was reminded of the One in a Million scene from Star Wars: A New Hope when Luke Skywalker does the “impossible” and fires the shot that destroys the Death Star. Hey, I grew up with those movies, what can I say, they made an impression.

There will be a new exhibit opening soon and I will definitely return to explore some more!