Sidney Hutter

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. 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.

Hutter was among the first artists in the world who experimented with laminated glass techniques and is considered a pioneer in the American Studio Glass Movement. 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.

Each piece of his is created using sophisticated and refined processes for cutting, polishing, and laminating commercially available plate glass. During the heyday of Studio Glass, Hutter’s art and process became increasingly more technical. In response, he co-designed and fabricated machines to help make his work more efficient.  His interests in glass, ultraviolet light and adhesive technology, and pigment applications have taken him around the country – attending conferences and researching the latest advancements in those fields. Through conversations with industry leaders, he has been able to adapt commercial processes to his studio practice and create landscapes of color between layers of glass. Over the years his art forms and studio practices have contributed greatly to the Contemporary Glass Art Movement.

With a combined use of rough or highly polished glass surfaces, along with specialized pigmented adhesives, Sidney creates three-dimensional sculptural objects in which the intersection of form, glass, color and light unite to create works of art with an amazing and ever-changing spectrum of color, reflection, and refraction.

“I make objects that suggest containment. My interests in design and architecture and my background in glass blowing and fabrication formed the foundation for my body of work. The concept of the vessel has played a significant role over the years and my work has focused on creating non-functional vessels using plate glass rather than the traditional blown glass. I have explored and incorporated numerous combinations of colors, surfaces, and forms to create solid, fragmented, airy, helical, circular and flat vessels by cutting, grinding, twisting and constructing individual pieces of plate glass. In this way my artwork reflects the evolutionary part of my life – ever changing and always developing.”

His works are included in many important public collections including The American Craft Museum, NYC, The Corning Museum, Corning, NY, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and The White House Collection in Washington, DC.