Plenty of Forms in the Sea

The glass artist Dale Chihuly is suing a former collaborator, Bryan Rubino, for copyright infringement, arguing that Rubino's lopsided, sea-inspired sculptures are obvious knockoffs. "About 99 percent of the ocean would be wide open," says Chihuly. "Look, all I'm trying to do is to prevent somebody from copying me directly." Rubino, not surprisingly, sees things differently: "Just because he was inspired by the sea does not mean that no one else can use the sea to make glass art. If anything, Mother Nature should be suing Dale Chihuly."