Clearly optical |
Optical glass, first available on a large scale from the 1940s, is a flawless glass used in the manufacture of lenses and prisms. Its fundamental quality is that it allows as much light as possible to pass into and through it. This has made it attractive to glass artists wanting to explore the intrinsic clarity of glass, or its reflective and refractive properties.
Other makers have found alternative, but equally novel, ways in which to explore the properties of their medium. Sidney Hutter has investigated the vase form more thoroughly than most contemporary glassmakers and studies his works from a decorative rather than a functional perspective. His compositions are built up of dozens of thin, transparent glass plates, cut and stacked to resemble a vase in silhouette but in fact they are completely solid. To extend the boundaries of his chosen form, Hutter often removes sections from groups of plates in order to create impossibly
Although the glass from which Hutter constructs these pieces is perfectly clear, he often uses pigmented glues.
When viewed on a plane parallel with the surfaces of the plates, light passes directly through the clear glass without picking up any color. When viewed from any other direction, however, the dyed glues flood the vases with color, yielding a wide range of unexpected optical effects. Hutter's choice of the vase shape represents a postmodern acknowledgment of the importance this form has assumed in the history of glassmaking. At the same time, however, he asserts its irrelevance in contemporary creative developments by making it completely nonfunctional.
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