Flo Perkins talks about Dale Chihuly as a community builder. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:07.

Flo Perkins (FP): I mean Dale was smart. He found a really good school and became the head of the department, you know. Dale is smart. He’s a very smart man.

Barb Elam (BE): Yeah. I mean, he really did play an integral role in all of these kind of connections, I mean.

FP: Can I tell you something?

BE: Yeah.

FP: I’d say vital. And I don’t know, you know, people don’t give Dale the credit anymore maybe, but, you know, you notice there’s not such a buzz in wood, metal, jewelry, etcetera—fiber, because no one stepped up and did this dynamic leadership thing that Dale did. Dale took it somewhere, and at his expense. Okay? And he gave—the thing about Dale, he was unbelievably generous to everybody. He set up several people in their glass shops, so they could make pieces for him, but he set them up, you know. And were their intimate relationships involved, yes, and it was very personal and it was very ‘in-crowd’ and it remains so. And but there was not a leader like that in any of the other disciplines.