Artist Statement
Welcome to my world of warm glass — a world both solid and fluid, craft and art, clarity and mystery, and always an element of surprise. As I continue to explore this exciting medium, my excitement grows with each new work, opening new doors all along the way. My professional careers over the past thirty years certainly speak for my willingness to re-invent myself. Beginning with a Masters Degree in Social Work, I worked as a clinical therapist, an administrator, and taught at the State University of New York. After settling in Ventura, California, in 1971, I taught Social Work at UCSB extension and did some clinical work but finally gave in to my love of architecture and design. True to my character, I jumped into that world at the retail furniture level while learning about the field of interior design. In the meantime I enrolled in art classes at Ventura College, exploring printmaking, silk-screening, figure drawing, ceramics and sculpture with some of Ventura’s best artists.
In 1975 I opened a design studio, soon tested to qualify as a professional member of the American Society of Interior Designers, opening my own design studio, and ultimately opened Gold Coast Design Center, a resource for other designers in the area. In both of these venues I hosted art shows for many of the leading artists in the area – Mary Michaels, Bill McEnroe, Carlisle Cooper, Dick Phelps, Ellis Jump, Norman Kirk, Carol Freedman and Hiroko Yoshimoto.
Having always loved any art form involving glass, I finally took the plunge into classes and, after an introductory class at Focus on the Masters in Ventura, California, I was smitten! I enrolled for a four-day class at Pacific Art Glass in Los Angeles and never looked back. Thank goodness for my husband, Ed, who has always been so supportive and who truly challenged me to “just do it”. So here I am, another incarnation of Fran as Frances Elson – GLASS ARTIST!
My first solo show took place within two years of starting on this exciting past, and I have been fortunate to have my work well accepted in the art community, and amongst my private collectors. After ten years as a glass artist, I understood that I now had a way to tell my story as a Holocaust Survivor. I created
an installation of glass art to chronicle that story and as a memorial to my parents and the sacrifices they made to bring us to freedom in 1948. That project, “Broken…A Holocaust Memorial in Fused Glass” has taken me on a new, exciting and fulfilling journey of sharing the project, and the story as a teaching tool in Southern California and Oregon, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, and even to a classroom studying the Holocaust in Australia. I am convinced that all of my career changes have led me to this place, where I have the privilege of teaching about the fragility of our freedoms through the fragility and strength of fused glass.