Heller Gallery is pleased to present new work from two of Marc Petrovic's series – Find & Seek and Distilled Life. In Find & Seek air bubbles in the shapes of letters trapped in glass spheres spell out hidden words. The words relate to the title of each individual piece. They are things that we might find and they are things that we may seek. As a viewer you take on the role of finder and seeker. These pieces quite literally ask the viewer to "read" (into) them. As in life, your role will vacillate between finder & seeker, and as you seek out certain words you will invariable find others. "Art vs. Craft," the artist's most ambitious piece in this series to date advances the work beyond a mere play on words. Its 256 elements continue the art historical discourse, as Petrovic literally and metaphorically asks the question artists working with both concept and glass confront.

Petrovic says about his Distilled Life series that "the bottles in this series serve to encapsulate, preserve and protect the ideas contained within. They serve as a stage for various ideas and impressions that both intrigue and befuddle me. Within the confines of these bottles my ideas can be distilled and developed. The themes inside the bottles vary, but at the core of this series are ideas of home, security, identity and relationships."

While Petrovic's pieces ask a lot 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.

Petrovic received his BFA in 1991 from the Cleveland Institute of Art. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Canada and Japan. He is represented in numerous public and private collections including the Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI; Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; The Mint Museums, Charlotte, NC; and the Niijima Museum of Glass in Japan. His exhibition "Sense of Place – The Glass Sculptures of Marc Petrovic" will open on July 15, 2007 at the Fuller Museum of Craft in Brockton, MA. The exhibition will be on view until November 11, 2007.

© Marc Petrovic (excerpted from www.marcpetrovic.com) and Heller Gallery, July 2007