Marianne Hite (1962 -)
Interpretations III, 2018 and 2019
The two parts of this triptych completed in 2019 were commissioned by Summa Health.
Materials: Fused glass with glass cane, silver foil, dichroic and iridized glass, 31.5” x 35.5".
Location at Summa Health: Dr. Gary B. and Pamela S. Williams Tower on the Akron Campus (141 N. Forge St.), blue neighborhood, sixth floor, hallway outside patient rooms H6-135 and H6-136.
About the art and artist
This triptych began with an early work of fused glass that inspired the commissioning of another pair of panels, in order to create a presence in its current location. Marianne Hite works mostly with fused glass with inclusions of silver foil, mica and glass paints, which she then etches and/or sandblasts (her work can also include kiln casting and slumping).These are among the many techniques, the best known of which is probably blown glass, for making artwork in glass, and all require extensive knowledge of a range of materials, tools and equipment that an artist acquires over years of experience.
In Hite’s work, these processes come together in a celebration of intense color and abstracted form.You the beholder are free to read into or find meaning in the abstracted geometric and organic shapes and the wash of vivid blue that these three panels, Interpretations III, establish.Generic references to inset stones, the eddy and flow of water, or the ordering of the natural world to artificial ends are all possible: The artist invites you to find a scale at which you are comfortable exploring the work and leaves you to that pleasure as you seek your own understanding.
Hite works in glass to create works ranging from wearables to large-scale public installations and commissions.She earned the Bachelor of Fine Art in glass at Kent State University’s School of Art and now works in her own shop, Hiteland Studio, in Green.She teaches or has taught classes there as well as at the Peninsula Art Academy, at the former Steinert Glass School in Kent, and for other institutions and public programs throughout Northeast Ohio, even as she has continued her own education by attending workshops on particular techniques around the U.S.
Where you can see more of this artist’s work:
The artist maintains a comprehensive website, and her work has been featured in installations in the Coral Reef exhibit at the Akron Zoo, the Green Branch Library and the Firestone Memorial Library, in the butterfly conservatory at Stan Hywet Hall, and in several places in the Akron Children’s Hospital. Hite exhibits intensively in Ohio and in Pennsylvania, and her work is carried by galleries in Akron and Cleveland and at the Canal Fulton Glassworks.