|
Our Artist of the Month is Sidney Hutter,
whose playfully deliberate work with color and form
challenges and delights our concepts of both. Hutter
is perhaps best known for his innovative exploration
of the uses of modern materials such as industrial
plate glass and UV sensitive adhesives to redefine
the accepted images of the vessel, or vase form. He
enjoys the dichotomy in his work of traditionally curved
outlines formed from an architecturally designed use
of layered glass. Consistently breaking scientific
ground with his new uses of industrial materials, Hutter’s glass sculptures prove that there is no end in sight to the discovery of new ways to create art with an ancient and well-explored medium.
Hutter grew up in an intellectual environment
in Illinois, the son of University Professors. His
father was a clinical psychologist and his mother was
a
linguist. After changing his major from sociology to
fine arts while at at Illinois State University, he
assisted Joel Meyers, David Huchtausen, Michael Meilhan
and Jim Harmon in the glass studio there. He attended
several glass conferences as a student at the Pilchuck
Glass Center, and has received degrees from Illlinois
State University, Normal, Ill., the Mass College of
Art, Boston, the Lowell Institute of MIT, Cambridge.
James Yood has said of Hutter’s work, “His…work has a lot of levels, 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. All this seems to 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 wind, acting incredibly subtly or unfailingly bold, all in horizontal slices of glass that build his argument layer by layer.”
Sculptures by Sidney Hutter can be found in many private and public collections, including the American Craft Museum, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Design, New York, the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC., the Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, the Museum of Fine arts in Boston, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the White House Craft Collection, Washington DC.
In speaking of his own artistic goals, Hutter says: “It’s a real hard thing to become an artist. You have to have some skill, some talent, some perserverence, some vision…You also have to have some luck…Life starts putting road blocks up and you have to have a clear vision, not necessarily to a goal but to a path along the way…That’s where I am. I gain energy from my work.”
One collector has said of Hutter: “Never have I met anyone who is more dedicated to his craft, more conscious of the integrity of the creative process, more singular in his artistic vision.”
^ Return to Top
|
