It's not your Grandma's Lucite
or
What's the big deal about this Lucite?

In the 1950's and 60's a "new" art medium of space age acrylic plastics made a splash. Innovators, artists, and artisans used the material to translate standard designs and items into new products. The strong clear plastic gave things a new see-through look. It was "cool" and hot. However the acrylic was mostly available in sheets. Therefore art and furniture was constructed as though one was working with wood. The fabrication process included sawing, cutting, drilling, sanding, gluing, and polishing. Dyes could be added to the glues for color, the acrylic could be bent and twisted to pipe light, and engraving or paint could be applied to the surfaces to express a whole range of ideas. Yet grandma's Lucite was still sheets of plastic stuck together.

Lucite is an incredibly clear, UV and water-resistant acrylic polymer. Hand cast Lucite is the highest quality acrylic polymers, and monomers mixed together to form a slurry into which pigments can be added. The slurry is pored into molds and polymerized in an autoclave. The results are seamless, solid, complex shapes, with colors suspended in the Lucite. The casting still has many hand processes to go through, yet the beginning of the process is in a mixing vessel not on a table saw.

Hand cast Lucite is a unique medium, rarely used in art or industry because of the technical demands and labor intensity. Hand casting allows the opportunity to add custom colors and control light through design. Controlling shape, color, light, texture and incidence of reflection, while allowing the viewer to see the front side, inside, backside and through the sculpture all at once is an amazing rush for an artist.

It isn't your grandma's Lucite anymore.