Mary Ann “Toots” Zynsky was born in 1951 in Massachusetts. She is a glass worker who began her career originally as a ceramics artist. In 1973, she received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design where so many artists converted to glass due to the influence of Dale Chihuly. In 1971, Chihuly brought a small group of friends and RISD students to Washington State. There, she participated in the founding and early development of Pilchuck Glass School. She also studied in Deer Isle, Maine, at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, as well as New York’s Experimental Glass Workshop where she was a teacher. While living in Europe in the late 1980s and 1990s, Zynsky developed a unique method of fusing thin strands of glass into colorful patterns slumped over sculpture on molds or forms in technique called ‘filet de Verre.’ She developed her own complex equipment for this process whereby intense heat is applied under a lowered hood to the multicolored threads of glass while they melt and fuse. Her work is dramatic as it shows a profound sense of color that ultimately comes from her knowledge and affection for the art of painting, dance as well as music.