Glass is a fascinating material.

It has height and depth and width.

In form but it also has optical illusion in it and that is what fascinates me.

It's an extremely esthetic and seductive material.

It's just beautiful on its own.

It's very elusive and difficult to control because it's working with a fourth dimension.

It's more than height and width and depth.

It's to control the compositions through the cut of the exterior form to create the beautiful esthetic patterns.

That you see internally, which are actually optical illusions.

That's why I find it a challenge and that's why I love it so much.

Artist Christopher Reese has developed new processes to create his glass sculptures.

So once again, the history of the medium has basically been blown glass vessels, decorative ware.

After World War I, and certainly after World War II, almost all the art glass production was dead.

Artists started to look at the wide variety of different kinds of glass, industrial and otherwise, started to go back and relearn what had been forgotten for 40 years during the war years.

But it was quickly realized by a lot of artists that there's no real name in that to be doing something.

That was another person's work.

And they started to break off of the traditional glass was being brought out and evolving to an art form, rather than a craft form.

I carve large blocks of optical crystal the same way that a stone sculptor would take a large block of stone and release the form from within it.

These pieces are not cast in this shape, they're not blown, the traditional sorts of things that you would think, processes that glasses is handled, this is completely different.

Optical crystal is the purest form of glass and is used in lasers and space exploration.

It's produced by Shot Glass Technologies in Pennsylvania.

This particular crystal that I use has a light transmission of 99.8%.

It's only two-tenths of one percent away from theoretical perfection.

As we go along through history, in the perhaps hundreds and thousands of years ahead, it can't be significantly improved upon.

I met the president of Shot Glass Technologies about 10 years ago.

And I saw a huge cullet pile of glass, discarded glass, behind the factory.

And I was so excited, I was hyperventilating.

I mean, this looked like the rock candy mountain.

And all I could think about was what to do with that material, how I could get some of it to my studio.

Christopher is now an artist-in-residence at Schott Technologies and uses his studio in Pennsylvania six months of the year.

Occasionally, he still works in Columbus in this smaller studio.

The main designing is done at the diamond saw.

That's where I decide if a piece needs to be carved more, if an angle needs to change.

It'll take about a month before it's finished.

After the crystal has been shaped, extensive polishing and buffing results in a brilliant surface and interior optical illusions.

It's almost always empirical.

It's trial and error.

It's whatever the way I feel.

I usually take a block of glass and look at it and rock it and roll it around and look at one plane in relationship to another.

Christopher Reese's work is on permanent display at the Riley-Hawk Gallery.

He has a way of generating excitement.

During his talks, he's a very sincere, very driven and dynamic person.

And it gives a chance for collectors and people who appreciate the arts to put his personality behind the work.

Outside exhibitions though have been the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Chicago Navy Pier show.

He was invited to a world exhibition show representing the United States with other artists from all over the world and that was in Hartford, Connecticut.

Coming up he's doing a show at Marywood College.

Glass as a medium is exciting and challenging for the artist because it's really never been done before so it's unlimited in the possibilities of what the artist can do with it.

So very talented artists are choosing glasses and medium to create and express themselves.

There's always another piece in my mind that I haven't done.

My life is very rich now.

I have a great family.

I have all the responsibility that I can handle.

I'm able to use the finest quality material and use it at the finest facility in the world also.

So I'm very blessed in that regard.

It's hard for me to want except for to want to continue to create objects of beauty and and enduring quality