Vase+No.+65+-+78

Date: 1990
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1991/1991.67_1a.jpg?itok=kpYN5flf width="255" height="326" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/vase-65-78-32277"]] || Title: **Vase #65-78**

Artist: **Sidney R. Hutter** Born: Champaign, Illinois 1954

Medium: cut, ground, beveled, polished, and laminated plate glass Dimensions: 23 x 15 in. (58.4 x 38.1 cm.) diam. Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of the James Renwick Alliance, Anne and Ronald Abramson, Sarah and Edwin Hansen and museum purchase through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program

Accession: 1991.67 || Sidney Hutter's pieces are not vessels in the literal sense; they mirror the outline of a traditional vase but are constructed from layers of plate glass to create a solid form. As Hutter explains, he wants his objects to suggest containment yet "hold nothing but the liquidity of light." Rectangular strips of glass divide each disc of beveled glass, forming a spiral that appears to lie within the vessel.
 * About the Artwork: **

Born in Champaign, Illinois, Sidney Hutter earned a B.S. degree in art at Illinois State University in 1977 and an M.F.A. in 1979 at Massachusetts College of Arts in Boston. He has been an instructor in cold-glass techniques at Boston University's program in artisanry and at the Massachusetts College of Art's School of Continuing Education.
 * About the Artist: **

Although Hutter was initially trained in hot-glass techniques and traditions, his principal influences remain the geometrically inspired designs of cubism, constructivism, and the Bauhaus. Describing himself as an "industrialist," he employs the mechanical methods of the plate-glass factory-cutting, grinding, beveling, polishing, sandblasting, drilling, and laminating. To ensure geometric clarity in his work, Hutter studied drafting technology at the Massachusetts Insititute of Technology's Lowell Institute in 1979–80. The artist's pristine sculptures are carefully engineered and contructed from laminated sections of commercial plate glass, using invisible glue. Light is absorbed and reflected, emphasizing purity of form and material.

Kenneth R. Trapp and Howard Risatti Skilled Work: American Craft in the Renwick Gallery (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998)

Hutter Vase Information
 * Resources: **

Visit the Luce Foundation Center to read and hear more. SAAM Collections Page
 * Links: **