Lydia Boss delivers glass art with unique spin

First, a definition of “anamorphosis”:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s “a distorted projection or drawing of anything, so made that when viewed from a particular point, or by reflection from a suitable mirror, it appears regular and properly proportioned.”

Got that?

Seattle artist Lydia Boss has embraced anamorphosis in a big way in “Lost and Found,” her show at Pilchuck Glass School Seattle Exhibition Space. Her images aren’t drawings but slurrily distorted circular digital photographs that, when viewed in curved reflective glass, reveal pleasing views of woodland and mountain backdrops near Pilchuck’s campus in Stanwood.

Those views are undistorted — but they’re not entirely “natural.” In “White Mountain,” Boss embellishes her snowy peaks with gigantic pink-white flowers as massive as cloud-cover. She does something similar in “White Peony,” where oversized flowers float between the trunks of Douglas firs.

“White Mountain” and “White Peony” are the two knots that tie Boss’ show together. They’re flanked by three circular digital photographs that aren’t equipped with corrective mirrors to let you see what they look like when they’re undistorted. They’re also kept company by straightforward glass sculptures that explore curved and nested forms.

“Tier,” for instance, consists of three colorless, conifer-shaped glass vessels neatly tucked inside one another, their layers producing a shifting, cumulative cloudiness as you step around them. Two assemblages of colored glass pieces — “Horizon” and “Fade” — compound their eye-bending effects by being placed on a mirror surface that seems to let them float on their pedestals.

These purely glass works feel almost like exercises that allowed Boss to explore the possibilities of curvature and distortion, before bringing photographed imagery into the picture.

But when you look at her website (www.lydiaboss.com), it’s clear that the photographs — in their uncorrected state — have become a main thrust of her work. They’re so striking in their own right that there’s no real need to see them undistorted.

The show’s title piece, “Lost and Found,” keeps the Pilchuck connection going with a woodland view (again with a mass of huge peonies crowding one side of it). But two pieces titled “Boxer I” and “Boxer III” play powerfully with what happens when human figures are subjected to anamorphic spins.

In a pugilism-meets-flower-power twist, Boss’ strapping boxers are also ringed, incongruously with copious pink blossoms. Other experiments with human figures (and one white rabbit) can be found on her website. My guess is that the next time she has a show, it won’t be at a glass-art gallery.

Here’s an artist who clearly can’t be confined to any one medium.