Dale Patrick Chihuly, born in 1941, was a teenager when his father died of a heart attack. He started running with a bad crowd. His earliest work in glass, he’s joked, was shattering streetlights, an act that led to his arrest.
After graduating high school, he was determined to leave formal education behind. But his mother insisted, so he enrolled in college. In 1961, he started studying glass.
A car accident in 1976 cost Chihuly sight in one eye; still, he continued to blow glass. But after a 1979 bodysurfing accident dislocated his right shoulder, he has left the physical work to others, instead providing guidance and direction to those who work to achieve his visions…