Paul Marioni Papers

Paul Marioni was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1941. He graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1967 with degrees in Philosophy and English. After graduation, Marioni lived in Cincinnati for several years, where he married and started a family. He had begun working on cars as a young teenager and continued to support himself and his family this way. During this time that he decided to become an artist.

In 1969, the family moved to San Francisco, where Marioni studied film with independent filmmaker Robert Nelson, and in 1970 he starred in a Nelson film titled _Rest in Pieces_. In 1972, Marioni created the mockumentary _Hole_.

The same year Marioni appeared in _Rest in Pieces_, he met stained glass artist Judy Raffael. Raffael’s influence and Marioni’s newly discovered interest in light, reflection and refraction piqued his interest in working with glass. By the late 1970s, Marioni had developed an innovative technique for fusing color into stained glass, eliminating the traditional leading between panes, and integrating designs and imagery into molten glass, which was then hand-blown. His work is included in many museum collections, and he has taught at the Pilchuck Glass School, the Penland School of Crafts, San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Art Institute, the California College of Art and Crafts, and the Glass Furnace in Istanbul, Turkey. He has also completed more than 100 public commissions and private commissions, some in collaboration with artist Ann Troutner.

Marioni has received many accolades for his work, including two National Endowment for the Arts fellowship grants (1976 and 1982). He is also a fellow of the American Crafts Council (1976), He also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Glass Art Society (2004) and the Pilchuck Glass School’s Libensky Award (2009).

Marioni has two children, Dante and Marina. He and his wife divorced in the early 1970s after seven years together, and Marioni raised the children himself. Both Dante and Marina work with their father.