His business built on flowers has blossomed into a career as art director and designer for the Bellagio Conservatory Ed Libby is our guest this week for Nevada week in person.

Support for Nevada week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt Welcome to Nevada week in person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon joining you from the Bellagio Resort and casino where as of this taping work is underway on the Bellagio Conservatory's newest display named Year of the Rabbit.

It opens January 9th and our crew will be back here to film it and we'll be showing you parts of it throughout this interview with the displays designer Ed Libby.

Thank you for joining us for Nevada Week in person.

It's my pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

Before we talk about Year of the Rabbit, I want to know about your roots in this business.

It's been reported that your creative process starts with flowers and the basis of your business when you started was in flowers.

So your passion for flowers, where does it stem from?

So my passion for flowers really stems from my childhood.

My mother was an avid gardener and always like celebrated beautiful things in the house with flowers and beautiful china and stuff.

And I think that that's where my love for creating party art really started an immersive experience.

I was in college.

I was in art school.

I started as a driver and a flower shop because it kind of like went along with my schedule in school.

And I was studying Flemish painting, still lifes and, you know, flower paintings and like the sunflowers here and the pineapples over here are kind of a thing.

The designer in the shop, it was 1984.

The designer in the shop where I was working got got very ill shortly after I started.

And I begged them to just let me give it a shot.

And they're like, you're the driver, just drive, deliver, deliver.

The stuff will get somebody else to make it.

So there was a fruit and vegetable market next to the flower shop.

And one night after, like, you know, working on setting some paintings and stuff, I was like, Oh, there is the same fruits and whatever.

So I made an arrangement and left it on the counter at the flower shop for them to either find and comment on the next day or not.

But I figured I'd give it a shot and they called me in right from school the next day and they said, Oh, we need to you need to talk about this.

Yeah.

And that's that's kind of how I got my I, that's how I got the opportunity.

And one of their clients was the director, the creative director for Tiffany and Company.

And at that time, Tiffany was owned by Avon.

And when they went back into private ownership, they needed to hook on creating this like really in the eighties, everything had to have a hook, right?

So creating this like really elaborate party and I had like parachute pants and flock of seagulls, hair, whatever.

They're like, we're going to have that kid do the arrangements.

Would you consider that your break into this.

18 years old you have on the jewelry case?

Is that Tiffany doing my thing, my parachute pants on?

And your favorite flower is.

I love roses, roses.

And it's because of the color and the fragrance.

And some have no fragrance and some have, you know, incredible fragrance and intoxicating.

So, yeah, it's like, almost like rose roses are like a palette to work with and then build on top of.

So not a particular color of Rose, but.

No, not a particular color.

Just really Oliver's in general.

All right.

So take me through the process from start to end of year of the rabbit.

You know, we do five exhibits a year here and the Lunar New Year exhibit, most of the exhibits are something where I get to be wildly creative on my own and come up with very unique concepts for the exhibits.

Some of them are a little edgy and some of them are very traditional, like the one that we just did for Holiday Lunar New Year is so intriguing because we are basically trying to be as culturally correct as possible with the exhibit.

Everything that's in the conservatory right now represents something.

There's a bed that represents serenity, discipline and hospitality that's all in the south bed.

And there's a really deep dove on all like there's cranes in there that represent long life, you know, all kinds of different things.

The book of knowledge is in there, which is like book of like Chinese disciplines.

And then we have one.

The feature bed is always like the figure for that year.

So we have our rabbit bed, which is the west bed, and then this year brand new.

We're adding this incredible character which is Chi Shen is the god of money and fortune.

So that's brand new for this year and like a really big part of this exhibit.

And then we have another bed that represents, we call it the Happy Children, and it's all beautiful figures made out of flowers and then other things in the bed that represent other parts of Asian culture, which is really cool.

When did you start planning this?

So there's 12, 12 characters animals in the Zodiac, and when I was hired in 2016, I kind of like looked them all up.

And the story of the Jade Emperor's banquet and I've been planning this one like full out for over a year, but I'm already like deep in the middle of that year.

The Dragon situation.

And the next one after that.

Is you're going to have to go through 12 years in order to do them all.

You started here in 2016.

I think 2016.

Is all right.

Well, quite a run you've had and will continue to have you mentioned cultural accuracy reimagined.

That is a challenge you probably face throughout the year.

In addition to appealing to all cultures and all ages, what are some of the challenges of your job?

You know.

It's it's interesting because Appalachia, one of the things that's the most important for me is to really bring the glamor factor.

Right.

We want to create something here, Appalachia, that somebody that's a gamer in Singapore is going to want to get on a plane and fly all the way here to come and see.

So as as far as like the overall design, I try to design a bed that I know that children are going to love for sure.

And sometimes it's a bed that's like really tricked out and they're going to love the bells and whistles.

And sometimes it's a bed like the one that we have in there now.

That's the children playing with the firecrackers and all the other great stuff we always have.

I always try to design one bed that has like a real kind of haute couture flavor to it.

Some other influence for you probably, and the.

Very high fashion client that comes through, you know.

Where did the.

Oh, okay.

All right.

And and there's also there's there's I also feel that the conservatory should be a place of knowledge and learning and serenity.

So there's always something that feels a little peaceful or nostalgic in the exhibit that we have.

And now the South, that is is very reflective.

It very quietly tells the story of the the rabbit arriving at the Jade Emperor's banquet.

And all the components of the story are actually in the bed, which is kind of really cool.

And the we're doing a dining experience here at the at the Bellagio now.

And the Jade Emperor's banquet where the rabbit arrives is actually the the, the place where we're doing the dining experience.

So that's kind of exciting.

That is neat.

The high fashion aspect, does that go back to your time spent in New York?

I think.

So.

I think so, yeah.

New York and Paris and Milan.

I think that bringing that kind of like haute couture element to one of the most glamorous properties in the world is is something that I really enjoyed and that that is very much appreciated.

So on the holiday display that you had here, you were quoted as saying, we're trying to push the envelope.

And there have been other mentions of you and your team constantly trying to outdo yourself.

How much pressure do you feel?

Well, I'll tell you that after the holiday exhibit that we just took out, it's a lot of pressure.

You know, I really wanted to do something very nostalgic and very reflective, something that was very relatable and exciting at the same time.

And I think that that the idea of the Village is and the and that we had a fragrance in there that smelled like gingerbread.

It was like a warm apple cider smell but is very gingery so holiday and we had a there is a gingerbread house that you can go into.

It's very immersive right between the fragrance and the music.

And we had an opportunity for people to buy cookies and and hot chocolate and things like that.

So I think that I think that coming up, like it's almost like when you do something like that, it's like, oh my God, we did such a good job.

What are we going to do next?

You know, on Monday I'm presenting the holiday exhibit for next year, which is so completely different than this, that that it's like it is exciting and exhilarating and scary at the same time.

How do you handle the pressure?

I, I, I use cookies, which is very, I mean, I do the best I can.

It's a lesson that the executive team here is so encouraging and so exciting and involved in the process, whatever, that they're never going to let us not do a great job.

They're always going to encourage us to to push the envelope even further.

So it's exciting.

It's very exciting.

And then, I mean, there may be pressure, but you're also planning these displays a year ahead of time.

Yeah.

So what I what I started to do two years ago, so we could see that the year as a whole was cohesive and one thing came after the next.

And we're going to we're going to do something that's, like, fun and innovative, and then we're going to do something serene.

The next time I present the whole year the concept for the year in one meeting with like almost like bullet point illustrations of what it's going to look and feel like.

And then once that fruit is approved, we design them individually.

Are there any rules of how much organic material there has to be in there?

You know, it's so funny.

The art, the role is to use as much organic material as possible.

There are there are some things that can't be made out of organic material, but there's there's silk and cotton are both organic materials.

It's not just about a flower petal or whatever.

So there really is very intriguing about what that all looks and feels like.

There's beautiful stones that we use.

There's more organic material in there than most people realize because they're so good at it.

Now, you know, white rice is is or sweet white rice is very white.

So in our lot like rabbit ears and stuff, we used to sweet rice.

People can't even tell that it's not fur, you know, or it's not like some fuzzy material.

It's a floral conservatory.

That's what it's all about.

It's about it's about beautiful, a beautiful botanical experience for the guests.

So people really need to be on the lookout instead of just assuming that might not.

We actually are just in the, you know, the other thing about being here now since 2016, there's ideas that I had in the beginning that were just ideas like in the back of my head.

And now as we go along with the PR team and the marketing team and the executive team, people are really interested in knowing like, you know, how can we do a deeper dove on the conservatory?

What's the next thing we can show or tell people or whatever?

And we're doing like really beautiful signage.

Some of the signage tells the story of the bed and then some of the other signage tells the ingredients and the process of building the obedience behind the scenes are how many flowers are in the beds, or how many pounds of grass seed it took to make the lion for the summer?

And wow, it's actually really interesting.

So we're in Las Vegas.

We're in a desert amid a drought.

How do you justify the amount of water that is used to keep these plants a lot?

You know, it's so interesting because I'm asked that quite often we you can see that we're sitting in front of a fountain now.

That water that's in that fountain was in that final exhibit before it came out and has been recycled throughout the resort.

We have underground wells here, Appalachia, that catch the rainwater and we don't use any portable city water for anything.

Everything for the conservatory is taking directly from, you know, our own resource and then use the water to the plants and throughout the rest of the resort as well.

All right.

There is a whole other aspect to your career that we haven't discussed, and that is as an event designer to the stars and for large corporations.

I mean, your roster includes Kelsey Grammer, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, Beyoncé, Usher, Naomi Campbell, Robert De Niro, Tommy Hilfiger, Disney.

Yeah, it's been it's been a wild ride, I'll tell you that.

It really has been really, really, really incredible.

And I have great stories about personal relationships with almost everybody that you mentioned.

It really is kind of incredible.

Which celebrity stands out to you and why?

You know, there's a couple Kelsey Grammer has become one of my best friends over the years.

We spend the holidays together and his two older kids are very, very good friends of mine.

We spend a lot of time together.

I just actually saw him for New Year's Eve.

Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony and I, when they were still married, planned her 40th birthday party at my house and at their house in in L.A. while she was filming a movie in Burbank.

And every time she you know, we knew that she was on the way home.

We had it like take off.

So I have like lots of fun memories of doing cool things with with them sitting on the floor and Puffy's office drawing sketches and stuff for him.

So when J.Lo would come home, did you have to try to hide the flowers?

No, we were we it was all illustrations.

And we had a special place in the library where we kind of like ducked everything away for the next time.

So complete surprise for her.

Yeah, she was totally surprised.

And what did it entail?

It was this really like.

It was amazing, actually.

It was it this really we took over a theater in New York and built like this kind of like art deco supper club.

And it was all friends of hers that performed like either stories, pieces from her career or pieces from celebrities that influenced her career.

Oh, that's neat.

One last question.

Real quickly.

Of all the events you've designed, what's your favorite?

The next one?

The next one is that it's strategy, I guess.

I think it's it's it's always like, you know, when when they're finished, you know, you look forward to even I have a family right now that we just did a magnificent wedding to their daughter.

And now there's there's two other kids that are like there's like maybe some engagements on the horizon somewhere down the road, you know?

And I know that I know that that's going to be part of our response.

But this is just exciting to a lot of legacy clients, people that have been using us for, you know, for as long as I've been in business, which is kind of incredible.

Ed Libby, thank you so much for your time and joining Nevada week in person and for more Nevada Week in person, go to Vegas pbs.org slash Nevada week.