His mountains of awards and honorary doctorates, are only part of his accomplishments. He is one of only four Americans to have a one-person show at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Palais du Louvre in Paris. He has been commissioned to do a wide variety of architectural installations all over the world: from a Shinto Shrine in Japan to a 4,000-piece work at La Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. He is currently working on the design for the Chihuly Bridge in Tacoma that will connect the new International Glass Museum to the city's University District with platforms bearing towers he's designed. Not to mention the fact that Chihuly's Pilchuck School and North Pacific Coast presence has helped make Seattle the glass capitol of the world, with over 3,000 people working at the city's more than 90 hotshops.

His credentials notwithstanding, Chihuly's savvy - or simply instinctual - marketing ability has helped him develop a rock-star's brand of notoriety in the art world. His designs borrow from natural and man-made forms, but are rarely recognizable, so the element of fantasy is a large part of the appeal of his work. His own eccentricity embellishes his ability to convince people that his medium is nearly otherworldly. He utters lines such as, "glass is like alchemy" with a look of awe on his face - his wild curls slightly tamed by the elastic that holds his black eye patch in place.

To him, it would appear that glass does have a fairy tale quality. "I don't know what it is about glass," he says with a storyteller's intonation. "It's the most durable yet fragile material in the world. It's the most intriguing. It's the most mysterious. It reflects light. It's also the cheapest material known to mankind - it's made of sand. It costs 10 cents to make a glass bottle and that bottle will retain it's shape for 10,000 years."

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