Deborah Czeresko currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She began working with glass in 1987 after completing a B.A. in psychology at Rutgers University. Her original focus in glass was the mastery of Renaissance Venetian glassblowing under the tutelage of the maestro William Gudenrath and later studies with Venetian maestros Lino Tagliapietra, Pino Signoretto, Dino Rosin and Elio Quarissa in traditional Venetian style. In 1991 she attended graduate school at Tulane University to pursue large-scale glass sculpting and hot casting with professor Gene Koss. At this time she also studied Czech sculpting with Petr Novotny, inspired by its more expressive gestures. Since graduating, she has been an instructor at Pilchuck Glass School, Tyler School of Art, New York University, Parsons School of Design and Urban Glass. She has been a visiting artist and lecturer at numerous universities and schools throughout the U.S and in Europe. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines includingDwell, Architectural Digest and Elle Décor. During her residency, Deborah will be working on a project titled, “Guild, Gilt, Guilt and Glut” (from Maestro to Machine the evolution of glass objects)

Star of the contemporary glass art scene and first winner of the Netflix© glass competition show Blown Away, Deborah Czeresko is known for creating work that is preoccupied with the cultural significance and the hierarchical systems of value that exist within the objects that surround us. With this in mind, she fabricates everyday objects in glass, exploring social and cultural constructs, and aims to unpack these systems and beliefs. Based in New York, Czeresko’s work has involved performances, collaborations, and exhibit installations at glass art centers like Corning Museum of Glass, UrbanGlass, and here at WheatonArts. 

50th Anniversary Visiting Artists
Czeresko has been a Creative Glass fellow at WheatonArts three times in 2006, 2010, and in 2014. For this exhibition, she chose to display a series of gum sculptures. By taking something seemingly disgusting like a piece of bubble gum on the street and making it out of glass, she asks the viewer to question and investigate ideas of formal beauty. Showing that even something chewed and discarded by the mouth or stepped on by a shoe can be rendered decorous.