Chihuly: Through the the Looking Glass
( Excerpted from the official biography) Dale Chihuly was born in 1941 in Tacoma Washington, USA. He first became interested in glass while studying interior design at the University of Washington. He followed up by enrolling in the first Glass program in the country at the University of Wisconsin. He continued his studies at the University of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), eventually he established the glass program there, teaching it for a decade.
In 1968 he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Venini Glass factory in Venice. There he observed the team approach to blowing glass which is critical to the way he works today.
http://www.chihuly.com/biography.aspx
One of the things that stands out for me is Chihuly suffered an eye injury in a car accident and now blind in that eye. I have heard , although it was not in the official biography, that this was instrumental in his adoption of the team approach that he had been exposed to in Venice.
I don’t have all of the names for his pieces but their beauty in my mind, speaks for itself.