Chihuly’s an art world superstar and it’s easy to see why.  He makes impossibly complex sculptures out of brightly colored glass.  While some of us struggle to put together Ikea furniture, this guy is creating huge, twisting forms through glassblowing, which is an insane process by the way.  Though the finished results may look like cute, Dr. Suess-ian sea creatures, making them requires heating glass to white-hot, molten temperatures and then blowing it into a bubble like the hardcore glassmith you are.  Who would have thought glassblowing was so metal?

Chihuly seems to have picked a risky profession for someone who is as accident prone as he is.  He was thrown out of a car in the 1970s and, ironically, the shattered glass from the windshield badly cut his face and blinded him in his left eye.  On the plus side, his eye patch makes him look like a badass pirate. A few years later he was in a bodysurfing accident and messed up his shoulder, so now he has a team of people who chance getting injured by the molten hot lava glass instead of doing it himself. Smart man.