hayden clay williams reinterprets everyday objects as sparkling stained glass sculptures
the artist brings 'suburban surrealism' to familiar throwaway objects by rebuilding their shapes in jewel-toned glass and soldered seams.
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stained glass takes on unexpected forms
An ordinary egg carton becomes something unexpectedly precious in the hands of artist Hayden Clay Williams. Its familiar folded shape is reconstructed from fragments of jewel-toned stained glass, with turquoise, amber, and soft pink panels joined by silver-colored seams. Sunlight passes through the delicate structure, scattering patches of color across the surface below. The humble carton, designed to protect fragile eggs, has become an object that needs protecting itself.
Williams brings the same playful approach to a traffic cone and a folding wet floor sign, recreating familiar objects in a material usually associated with decorative windows and Tiffany lamps. Their recognizable silhouettes remain intact, though their surfaces have taken on an entirely different character. There is something playful about a roadside safety object made from breakable glass, especially when the finished sculpture looks somewhat convincing from a distance.
hayden williams reconstructs familiar objects in glass
The artist’s Egg Carton (Six Wells) is perhaps the most intricate of the works. Angular pieces of colored glass form a shallow container with six recessed compartments, while the soldered joints trace its ridges and folds. Viewed from above, the carton becomes a composition of overlapping colors and geometric patterns. In direct sunlight, those individual pieces dissolve into soft, irregular reflections.
His stained glass traffic cone is just as recognizable. The small sculpture follows the tapering profile of the familiar orange marker, complete with a broad square base and narrow opening at the top. Its surface is divided into amber and copper-colored sections, interrupted by small diamond-shaped details. Placed beside a conventional traffic cone, the contrast is particularly amusing. The two objects share the same basic geometry, though one is built to endure the street while the other belongs somewhere considerably safer.
A wet floor sign offers another variation on the idea. Williams recreates the familiar folding A-frame in golden glass, with a small warning symbol assembled from translucent pieces at its center. The figure appears to be slipping, just as it would on the original plastic sign. Here, however, the warning takes on a second meaning. The sign itself is vulnerable to the very accident it illustrates.
from digital experiments to physical sculpture
Williams has spent years exploring surreal suburban environments through digital imagery. He often inserts strange details into otherwise familiar suburban scenes. His earlier work includes World Underwater, a series of digitally rendered landscapes in which rising floodwaters transform residential neighborhoods (see designboom’s larger coverage here). More recently, his interest in familiar objects and altered materials has taken shape through stained glass, and has brought ideas previously explored on screen into physical space.
The transition introduces its own practical challenges. Williams spent around three weeks constructing the wet floor sign, using lead-free solder to join its individual glass pieces and zinc framing for structural support. Its hinge is functional, allowing the two panels to rotate through a limited angle. These details preserve something of the original object’s construction, even as the material changes its purpose entirely.
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