Who Is Really Making ‘Chihuly Art’?
“But he’s a shell of the man that he was — it breaks my heart.”
In the lawsuit, where pretrial motions are underway, Mr. Moi said the level of Mr. Chihuly’s disabilities were never disclosed to art buyers or the public and
that Chihuly Studio often intimated that Mr. Chihuly’s paintings were entirely by his own hand.
Another artist who has known Mr. Chihuly for many years said he believes Mr. Chihuly
is still making “Chihuly art,” even if others are constructing and finishing it.
“Any artist is going to suck up all the energy in the room,” said Toots Zynsky, a glass
artist who studied with Mr. Chihuly in the 1970s and remains friends with him.
Seattle became an art-glass capital largely because of Mr. Chihuly, through the Pilchuck Glass School, a nonprofit academy north of the city
that he helped found in 1971, and the two museums built around his work or glass art in general.
“The more I worked, the more I sold work, the more people I could hire,” Mr. Chihuly said in an interview
in his 34,000-square-foot studio complex here in Seattle, near where he was born and raised.
