On Our Radar

Every day, in the small, pic­turesque village of Essex, Connecticut, the glass artists Marc Petrovic and Kari Russell-Pool send their two daughters off to school, enter their non­descript 1,700-square-foot studio and work side by side until the children return at 3:00 p.m. The husband and wife, who first met in 1987 at the Cleveland Institute of Art, have worked closely for years, while at the same time maintaining a certain independence that allows them to distinguish one person's work from the other's.

In 2005 Sangjoon Park had an epiphany. He looked at a pile of bowls on a table in his studio and suddenly understood that they were art. Never before had he considered these ceramic pieces to be anything more than utilitarian. "At that moment I realized these bowls-my training foundation-made me an artist long ago," Park says. "Most of us are in constant search for a new joy and we forget to appreciate what we have. This is how I came to a new appreciation of my work."

Matthias Pliessnig talks fast, as if to keep up with a rapid flow of ideas. Movement interests him, whether it's flight, the way a boat cuts through water or the physics of how a seat responds to its sitter.

Recently the 29-year-old sat still long enough for a conversation by the shore of Lake Mendota ("I come here all the time," he says. "I just got bitten by a duck") near the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he's pursuing a graduate degree in furniture design/sculpture. He spoke about his life and work so far, which "definitely includes movement."