Extremely well put. Part of the reason I wrote my original comment was to see what the HN collective thought about my reasoning- as I have personally struggled to think of Dale Chihuly as being an artist once I found out that he does not actually create the works that bear his name.

Likening him to a composer directing his own symphony makes a lot more sense- no one would argue that Mozart wasn't a great artist just because he couldn't play the whole symphony by himself.