Seeing Glass in a Whole New Light
By Hannah Benoit
Sculpture is, by definition, three-dimensional.
Or is it?
"I work in a fourth dimension," glass-sculptor Christopher Ries told Professor Tim Cunard's "Sculpture I" class. That dimension is light. "In my work, light is reflected, refracted, focused, and transmitted out. You look into it and see these wonderful optical illusions."
His meaning is crystal clear when you see the work, pieces carved from massive blocks of glass, on display in the Beard Gallery through October 8. Take, for example, the piece called "After Glow," shown at right. At first glance, it is a clear, simple flame shape, more than 40 inches tall. Moving closer, though, one glimpses curves, rainbows and reflecting surfaces inside. And like a flickering flame, the piece of glass changes continually as one walks around it, viewing it from various angles.
At Wheaton as an Evelyn Danzig Haas '39 Visiting Artist, Ries spoke to students about the aesthetic, technical, and business aspects of his work, stressing that professional artists must think of themselves as business owners if they are to be successful. He also gave a public lecture at the opening of his Wheaton show on September 8.
Ries's medium is pure lead crystal manufactured by Schott Glass Technologies in Duryea, Pennsylvania, where Ries serves as artist-in-residence. In Schott's studio, Ries and a team of assistants make use of a diamond-tooth grinder, a 500-foot-long wire saw and other high-tech equipment to cut, grind and polish pieces weighing hundreds of pounds and standing up to four feet tall.
Ries is the only major artist who carves sculpture from whole slabs of glass in this manner. The work is labor intensive, requiring four hours to cut a four-foot high block in two, and up to five months to create a major piece from start to finish. "The hand polishing alone is two months," Ries said of a piece called "Blue Moon," an upright egg of pale-blue glass, inside of which a tiny image of the full moon, complete with craters, appears to be floating.
"It's very elusive and evocative to look at this," says Ries. "You have no idea where it is." (In fact, the moon image is engraved on the bottom of the glass egg.)
Being a successful artist is immensely satisfying, Ries told the students, but it also demands scrupulous attention to business practices such as inventory control, record keeping, taxes and effective marketing.
"These are the downside of art," he said, "but without them you don't have a structure in which to function." He stressed that an artist's rewards are enormous, despite the "downside."
"Art is not just documentation. Art is putting your heart and soul into something and communicating something that hasn't been communicated before."
After the class, Ries said he values his visits to colleges such as Wheaton. "I know how important the university system is," said the artist, who received a BFA degree in glass and ceramics from Ohio State University and an MFA in glass from the University of Wisconsin. "It's the quintessential essence of our Western culture, the dissemination of knowledge. It's important that these kids are exposed to top-quality art and science."