Wheaton Conversations: Esteban Salazar & Matt Jacob

Wheaton Conversations:
Esteban Salazar & Matt Jacob

Watch the above recording from April 20, 2023

For 40 years WheatonArts has provided Fellowships to artists working in glass. Join us in celebrating the 40th anniversary of our Creative Glass Fellowship Program and converse with our two Spring 2023 Fellows, Matthew Jacob and Esteban Salazar!

Based in Norfolk, VA, and New York City, respectively, both artists work regularly for large public glass institutions (Chrysler Museum of Art Glass Studio, UrbanGlass) and in several other self-employed and self-driven directions. Follow along as they share their experiences working in a glass community and branching out to speak more broadly about their experiences (jobs, commissions, teaching, leading, making their own artwork, etc.) as glass professionals.

This event is part of “Wheaton Conversations,” a virtual series highlighting a diverse community of Artists!
To see the full schedule of conversations, Click Here. 

Thank you to our sponsors, PNC Arts Alive!, the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass,
and the United Nations International Year of Glass.

This image is a headshot of 2023 creative glass fellow Esteban Salazar, who is wearing a breathing mask used for working with chemicals and a black shirt.

Esteban Salazar is a Colombian-born artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York, best known for his engaging teaching approach to a wide range of glassmaking processes. His work opens new conceptual ground in the practice of reuse, sustainability, and access in art, actively reframing the systems that confer value and class status in contemporary American culture. In 2001, Salazar moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and started working with glass at the Bay Area Glass Institute (BAGI). After completing his MFA in the spatial arts program at San Jose State University, California, in 2013, he moved to New York. Salazar teaches craft in glass for the Steinart School of Art and Art Professions at New York University. He has taught at The Corning Museum of Glass, The Pratt Institute, The School of Visual Arts, San Jose State University, Saint Francis College, and Long Island University.

A grey-scale headshot of 2023 creative glass fellow Matt Jacob, who is looking directly at the camera and wearing a dark sweatshirt, is the image's subject.

Matt Jacob enjoys bending neon, making comics, working with glass in any context, and adding ironic fourth items to lists. For him, art shows others how you see the world, and his own art often explores themes of community, identity, and change. Despite his claims that “the mid-west coast is the best coast” (UW-Madison BFA 2018), he currently lives in Norfolk, VA, where he’s an instructor and local neon wizard at the Chrysler Museum of Art Glass Studio. He has also worked at Starworks, NC as a glass intern, at Pilchuck Glass School as seasonal staff, and The Governor’s School For The Arts (Norfolk, VA) as an instructor for high school glass and comics classes.