Yuka Otani

WSKG Arts is proud to partner with the Corning Museum of Glass on a series of arts segments that feature past resident artists of the museum. This short features Yuka Otani, a 2015 resident artist at the museum.You might not look at glass and candy and think they have similar properties, but Yuka Otani does. “Those two materials share many characteristics,” she says. “But what if they are made into a unified object?”A Rhode Island School of Design graduate, Otani has been experimenting with clear materials for quite some time. Inspired by glass, water, melted sugar, and light, Otani loves the elusiveness of the materials, and how they are poised for change.Otani created a series of stemware with the stem and foot of each goblet made of cast clear glass, and the cup made of cast Isomalt, a sugar substitute produced from beet sugar. Regular hard candy is made of granulated sugar, and as such, holds a yellow tint when heated, but Isomalt has excellent transparency, matching that of clear glass. Otani explored how materials can seem present and absent at the same time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeAXZisGOQwThis segment was produced by the Corning Museum of Glass