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Matthew Szősz, Executive Director, Public Glass

Public Glass
1750 Armstrong Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94124
www.publicglass.org

I was born in Rhode Island, and attended Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) as an undergraduate in design (furniture making, specifically). After my graduation, I abandoned design and began looking for jobs in the fine arts, taking a position as an artist’s assistant to Dan Clayman. This started a string of assistantships to individuals in the glass world, including Michael Scheiner and Nikolas Weinstein, among others.

When I decided to start making my own work I returned to RISD for graduate school, this time in glass. Following my degree I began earning awards and residencies in the US, Europe, Japan, and Australia. These included Emerging Artist in Residence at Pilchuck in 2007, a Wheaton Fellowship in 2008 and the 2009 Jutta Cuny-Franz Memorial Award. I will participate in the upcoming “40 under 40” at the Renwick Gallery in 2012.
As I came to glass through the back door, so to speak, my process never followed the traditional paths. In the studio I spend most of my time in material investigation, working with the glass to uncover unique processes and interesting properties inherent in the material. When my work is most successful, the pieces are the result of a partnership between myself and the material, and the glass has as much input into the final form as I do.

Public Glass is an institution I am familiar with, having been an instructor here from 2002 to 2005 when I built and managed Public's warmshop. While it has had something of a bumpy ride over the last decade, it is a place which has always had a core community of supporters who have seen it through its rough patches. This virtue of a resilient and dedicated community points to a solid institutional foundation underlying Public Glass, and indicates that it both fills a demand in the bay area, and excites passion in its supporters.

Under the leadership of Guido Gerlitz as Executive Director and Elizabeth Link as Board President, Public Glass has made great strides towards becoming a stable and structured non-profit entity. This solidification of Public Glass as an institution means that we can reliably provide a quality service for the public and our core users, and creates a great base from which to build and re-build some of the more arts and community oriented programs that Public Glass aims for in its mission statement and institutional goals. 

These were the considerations that I was taking into account when debating becoming the ED, and I think they point to a great opportunity to help give San Francisco the public access glass studio it deserves.

The Bay Area is home to large number of glass and glass-oriented artists, from the old guard of Marvin Lipofsky and John Lewis to emerging and unconventional artists such as Alex Abajian and Helen Lee. But while there are vibrant individual practices here, the area lacks a strong sense of community, or a recognition as a glass making destination, both for artists looking to create, or for collectors looking to deepen their understanding of the medium.

I think that Public Glass can, with some hard work, and the involvement of the broader glass community, become a place that acts as a nexus for the local community and a point of attraction for the broader glass world in general. To do this, I am attempting to strengthen the inclusivity of Public Glass, reaching out to the various institutions and organizations with convergent interests around the Bay Area, including BAGI, GLANC, and the Crucible, as well as the nearby schools, CCA, SFSU and San Jose State, (we hope to welcome the Bullseye Resource Center as well to the area in the coming year) to see in what capacity we can benefit each other, and further mutual aims.

[Matthew Szősz]