Born in Rhode Island, Matthew Szösz has received a BFA, a BID (Industrial Design), and a MFA (Glass) from Rhode Island School of Design. He has worked professionally in art and art-related fields in Rhode Island, New Mexico and California for the last twelve years. He was an Emerging Artist in Residence at Pilchuck in 2007, and a Wheaton Fellow in 2008. In 2009 he was an artist in residence at Nagoya Institute for the Arts and taught a workshop at Toyama Glass Institute. He won the 2009 Jutta Cuny-Franz Memorial Award, becoming the second American ever to do so. More recently he has been the Craftsperson in Residence at Virginia Commonwealth University and a Proctor Fellow at Australia National University. In 2010 he founded Hyperopia Projects, a curatorial organization for the promotion of experimental and cross-genre work. In 2011 he was the Executive Director of Public Glass, a San Francisco non-profit, and was a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant Winner. This year he will complete residencies at the Toledo Museum of Art, Canberra Glassworks, and the Danish Royal Academy, Bornholm and was selected by the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution as one of the top young Craft artists in America for their exhibition 40 under 40.