The Stranger On Chihuly
The Stranger's article on Dale Chihuly and his recent lawsuits is exactly what you think it is; Dale bashing at its finest. If you live in Seattle and you're even vaguely paying attention you know that Dale Chihuly hasn't touched an actual piece of glass in years and he's more of a pirate captain figurehead directing his little glass gnomes here and there. You can be forgiven for imagining him with a whip when he's standing over the laboring blowers. Jen Graves goes over all of that in her article, minus the whip.
One of those gnomes broke free of the chains that bound him and started blowing glass for another guy recently and Chihuly's suing them both for imitating the inimitable Chihuly style. Maybe you knew that. When we first heard of that case we were pretty sure that Dale was headed for a legal kicking of the ass because the gnomes and alternate gnome masters we'd conjured up in our minds were legit artists who were in no way infringing on Dale. This is where the Stranger article blows you up. The guy perpetrating the infringing is probably guilty and Dale's probably going to deliver the legal ass kicking. So, that's a disappointment somehow, as is the narrative of glass gnome Bryan Rubino that Graves works into the story. He's painted as a talented rube who's on the verge of getting sued for everything he's aquired from a lifetime of creating beautiful glass art (which is nothing) and losing.
