Toots Zynsky is a pioneering studio glass artist, Born in Boston, and raised in Massachusetts she earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1973. She known for developing filet de verre – a technique of heating and melding arranged glass threads into sculptural vessels. Toots Zynsky’s distinctive heat-formed filet de verre (glass thread) vessels enjoy a widespread popularity and deserved acclaim for their often extraordinary and always unique explorations in color. Defying categorization, her pieces inhabit a region all their own, interweaving the traditions of painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts.

In an age in which the relevance of beauty to art is widely questioned, Zynsky's work is uncompromisingly beautiful. As you get to know Toots Zynsky, you realize that her glass masterpieces are a powerful metaphor for her own life. Her fearlessness and individuality propelled her to invent an entirely new way of working with glass. Her resilience and innate curiosity embolden her to continually push an inherently fragile medium to its limits. And her talent and openness to new ideas drive her manipulation of glass and color into beautiful works of art.

Experimentation is also central to Toots Zynsky artistic practice. Toots Zynsky experimental work—which was characteristic of much of the art being made in the 1970s—was important for the development of glass as a material to explore issues in contemporary art. Zynsky has made a life’s work of studying and manipulating colored glass through the vehicle of her distinctive, undulating forms. Continually evolving, her work is a formal exploration in color and composition that has no end. Toots was also characterized as "one of the few women of her generation to break the glass ceiling.