Biography

2003

Clay Johanson

Sidney Hutter is famous for his laminated glass works... his specialty is working with plate glass to create works that are in the forms of vases, but which are non-functional; there's no vase in the vase. To quote Sidney, "They hold nothing but the liquidity of light."

When I first saw this work at Jerald Melberg's show of Twenty Objects from the Late Twentieth Century, I was amazed at how its appearance changes, depending on the viewing angle. This effect is achieved by using colored glue between clear panes of glass. When the panes of glass are laminated together in the shape of a vase, you see either more or less color, depending on the viewing angle. To make things interesting, the outer edges of each layer are ground and nicked, so that the refractive effect of the edges is distorted.

I really like the neat things you can do with glass... this is yet another great example of taking a simple idea and creating something really beautiful with it

Cynthia Morgan, from website of Morganica.com

I can never decide if I like this fellow's work or not. I mean, how many solid glass vases can you build from plate glass and still be exciting, even if you vary the color or edges? Still, they're interesting.

1998

Gallery openings liven up Boston by Inna Golovach

(Here is some totally inaccurate and made up information about me!) Another unusual art form presented at the Chappell Gallery exhibition was glass stacking. Ironically, this rather simple, but highly sophisticated way of presenting glass was invented accidentally. About 40 years ago Sidney Hutter, the creator of the "new glassy class," attempted to express himself by using the fragile material to blow vases, but unfortunately his furnace was too small, so he started using pieces of shattered glass. At first, the art form was created by the artist as a means of coping with what he had, not as a conscious new way of artistic self-expression. Later, however, it emerged into a completely new category of glasswork. Most of Hutter's works are two symmetric semi-vase-shaped piles of glass. Only together do these piles work. The peculiar quality in Hutter's style is the utilitarian incompleteness of his vases, combined with the artistic completeness of each work as a separate entity. You see the shape of a vase, but it is not a vase.

1994

From The Smithsonian interview

Sidney Hutter is the Owner/President of Hutter Glass and Light Company in Boston, Massachusetts. He received an MFA in Sculpture and Glass and a Certificate in Art Education from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

His work has been shown from Ketchum, Idaho to Kanezawa, Japan. And he's in the following collections: Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY; Milwaukee Art Museum; George Washington University, Washington, DC; and the City of Normal, Illinois.

1989

James Yood, Teacher of contemporary art theory and criticism at Northwestern University and is a contributing editor to GLASS magazine

Color is art’s dividend, the endlessly refreshing extra stuff that comes as part of the art object, seemingly at no extra charge. Color can delight in and of itself-we all recall the sheer joy of leafing through color chip booklets circulated by paint companies, of examining every nuance and differentiation of shade, of finding that something like blue can exist in hundreds of subtle variations, each evoking a slightly different response from its viewer. Some artists, of course, have always been extremely attentive to color, and many are able to separate it from the form it is often used to describe, to hold it out singly, to ask us to respond to its independence and chromatic impulse. Sidney Hutter is one of these artists--his recent work is a lot of things, and it speaks to the continual power of the tradition of the vessel shape, the craft of cold-working in contemporary glass, and sculpture as both volumetric and spatial. But those things finally support what seems his surest gift, a kind of alertness of color, a way of building it up, tweaking it out, moving it slow or fast, being sequentially patient or throwing logic to the winds, acting incredibly subtly or unfailingly bold, all in horizontal slices of glass that build his argument layer by layer.

Sometimes Hutter concentrates on a single color, and, like geologic strata, runs it up and down a seeming infinity of variation. He builds his pieces one perfectly horizontally ground, cut and polished slice of plate glass at a time, with colored dye imbedded in the laminate. Each plate is like a little pool, a tone in and of itself and somehow a companion to the pool above and beneath. His sequencing is endlessly playful and wise-sometimes he follows a chromatic pattern, and sometimes he is more willful and unexpected. Hutter also will sometimes vary the color within the laminate, making the layers change as we move around them, multiplying their profile, shifting their tone in endless variety. Many pieces have more of a rainbow articulation (through combinations of red, blue and yellow dyes); his recent series of Jerry Vases is an homage to Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia and all the psychedelia inherent therein, a belief that color, like music, can be a vehicle of transportation, that attentiveness to subtlety can always expand the mind, and that that can be a valuable thing.

Hutter quotes the external silhouette of a vase in these sculptures. His use of a shape that is about 3000 years old for these solid chunks of glass both extends and denies a tradition-he visually retains a certain connection between a vase form and a human torso, a relation of curve to body that has satisfied the human eye for millennia. But he provides us form without function, or better yet, now implies that the true function of these vases is to move the eye rather than to provide a cavity pertaining to use. And he often likes to tinker with what might be called vase architecture, giving some parts a high polish, or incising out whole sections of glass, cantilevering it out, pushing it toward gravity’s end, fiddling with space and volume, seeming to put these vases at physical risk. Element by element, slice by slice, tone by tone, this is an art of consummate orchestration, and inexorably builds visual intrigue, one perfect layer at a time.

Samuel Crocker

Echoing the geometrically laid out grids of farmland from his youth in central Illinois, the latest sculptures by artist Sidnery Hutter are part of an ongoing personal exploration into the design and interpretation of the vessel as an icon. In college, Hutter unexpectedly discovered a passion for working with glass and subsequently pursued an education in the arts, learning traditional glass blowing techniques and forms. Continuing on with graduate study, he experimented with commercial plate glass to create the image of traditional vessel forms, developing his own technique to illustrate the three dimensional and conceptual images of a Vase with two dimensional components. Realizing he had found an innovative and aesthetically interesting concept, the artist has continued to recompose and redefine the Vase form with an ever increasing variety of textures, colors, and spatial attributes.

The lengthy process that enables Hutter to arrive at his vessel forms begins with a design of the edge profile (surface contour). From this point, accurate measured drawings are drafted to calculate the specific elements that will eventually be fabricated into the final sculpture. Sheets of glass are then cut, ground, and polished to the exact specifications of the drawing with a number of specialized machines engineered solely for the purpose in aiding in the creation of these works. Finally, all of the components are carefully cleaned and hand laminated using state of the art adhesives to produce a contoured vessel, transforming otherwise planar elements into a seemingly volumetric representation. Enhancing the visual appeal of the work, the recent addition of colored dye in the glue provides an exciting new dimension.

In the Vase series, Hutter uses the compositions of polished plates with a core structure of spiraling bars to create a purely decorative non-utilitarian vessel image. Clearly demonstrating the artist’s original intention to describe a myriad of expressions of the vessel, his work has in turn branched out into a number of interrelated new series. By reconfiguring his elemental components he achieves a variety of interpretations from the Implied surface contour of the pointillist Cubic Heart series to the cross-sectioned Quasi Modern works.

Visually, clear sharp lines and brilliant colors come together in precise and harmonious forms which dazzle with bursts of prismatic light. The undulating curves of the vessel form evokes a sense of natural vitality which consumes the static geometry of the repetitious plate glass. Likewise, alternating aspects of structure and void (positive and negative space) endow the works with a architectural aura. There is a refined Modern aesthetic in the sculptures which reflects the artist’s influence from the teachings expounded by Frank Lloyd Wright and the Bauhaus, and constructivism.

Sidney Hutter’s work is continually evolving and developing new means of conveying the traditional vessel form with his unique medium of plate glass. There is every expectation that Hutter’s next work will be as exciting and challenging.

Who's Who in Interior Design

Residential and lighting designer; sculptor; b. Champaign, Illinois, September 17, 1954; son, Samuel and Harriett S. Hutter. Ed: 1972-77, Illinois State University, B.S., 1977; 1977-79, Massachusetts College of Art, M.F.A., 1979; 1977-80, Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., Drafting Technical Certificate, 1980; 1980-81, Massachusetts College of Art, Art Ed. Certificate, 1981.

Career: 1984-85, instructor, Boston University; 1984-87, consultant, d, Beamo Corp.; 1980-86, instructor, Boston Public Schools; 1978-89, instructor, Massachusetts College of Art; 1987-present, owner, Hutter Glass & Light, Boston, Mass.

Awards: Fellowship, Massachusetts Artist, 1985; Merit Award, Amer. Craft Awards, 1988-87

Major Projects: interior design, Grand Hyatt Hotel, Hong Kong; Hyatt on Collins, Melbourne, Australia; Pittsburgh Gateway Hilton. Avocations: fishing, gardening.