Marc Petrovic graduated from the Cleveland institute of art in 1991. He was the recipient of the top Agnes Gund Memorial scholarship.His work is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Arts and Design, The Corning Museum of Glass, Tacoma Museum of Glass, and the Niijima Museum of Glass. He works out of a private studio that he shares with his wife Kari Russell-Pool near their home in Cleveland, Ohio, where he is an assistant professor and chairman of the glass department of the Cleveland Institute of Art.“I strive to be an artist first and a hot glass sculptor second. Although I primarily work with glass, a material most commonly viewed as a craft material, I strive to make content driven work that stresses the idea at its core rather than the seductive material it is made from.Glass is a fantastic material to create work with. Once you get past the expansive technical difficulties of working with this material, it offers the creator almost endless possibilities for form, color, and content. It is one of the few materials where you work with color and form simultaneously. Glass also has the unique ability to be opaque, translucent, or completely transparent. But glass in itself is limited. It is just a material. Until it is infused with an idea, a source, or an expression, my job as an artist is not complete.My approach to working is to make many varied parts. Most parts are made to satisfy a list for sketched pieces; with extra parts and variations being made at the same time. Often times these parts sit for months or years before they make their way into one of my pieces. I like working with these extra parts. I tend to view them as home made found objects. As they sit on my shelves with seemingly disparate parts, some of these parts start to dialogue with each other and new ideas emerge. This gives a lot of crossover between my pieces as distinct parts get used in various series.My pieces revolve around ideas that both intrigue and befuddle me. While these pieces ask alot of questions, they attempt to answer none. They simply serve as a way to contain and continue a dialogue. At the nucleus of each sculpture is an idea around which the piece grows. In a sense, the way a grain of sand aggravates the oyster enough that it creates a pearl."