A few years ago, Sungsoo Kim happened upon some chunks of Styrofoam that had encased a new MacBook laptop and did a double take. He found himself entranced by the shapes, at once ancient and futuristic. “They were really beautiful,” recalls the Korean-born glass artist, who now lives in Cleveland, OH. “I just said, Wow!”

That epiphany has led to a rich, evolving series of kiln-cast glass sculptures entitled Rediscovery, in which Kim explores, challenges and redefines notions of art, beauty and value. To make his molds, he uses discarded Styrofoam packaging, an industrial material whose express purpose is to protect goods in transit, after which it instantly becomes garbage. By recycling it into glass art—a high-value commodity—Kim seeks to reveal its hidden aesthetic worth, creating a new context for an everyday object much as Duchamp did with his readymades a century ago.

Kim finds endless variety and inspiration in the Styrofoam we all toss without thinking twice. Often he can’t even tell what the packaging originally contained. Yet these mysterious forms are still somehow deeply familiar to any consumer, as is that unmistakable bumpy surface texture he deliberately preserves in his glass pieces: “I want people to make that connection."

A graduate of the glass program at Kookmin University in Seoul, Kim, 34, came to the U.S. in 2006 to study at Pilchuck Glass School, earned his MFA at Kent State University in 2008, and is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Art. He has earned critical acclaim and a number of awards, including Best in Show in the recent exhibition “BIGG: Breakthrough Ideas in Global Glass,” sponsored by Steuben.

By now, Kim says, people know about his fascination with Styrofoam and are always bringing him their finds. He regularly checks dumpsters to add to his collection (he never buys an item just for the packaging, insisting on trash only). Usually he’ll photograph the pieces, then play with virtual shapes on his computer. Finally he’ll execute elements in molten glass and glue them together in abstract compositions that range from single freestanding sculptures to wall installations consisting of any number of smaller, individual pieces. Color is key to his reimagining of standard-issue white Styrofoam: Kim’s glass is saturated with vivid hues, from jade green to fiery red, such as Rediscovery 08052, and an astonishing spectrum of blue, including Rediscovery 0609, “a special color in my life.” Using technical expertise, he varies the transparency of the glass, creating murky depths that play with light.

“Glass is a special material for me, because I can see the object and see through the object,” he says. “I want to see what’s going on inside.” One sculpture, Rediscovery 09023, is a particularly explicit declaration of Kim’s interest in dimensions and layers, both physical and metaphorical. To his delight, even his young son picked up on it, observing, “It’s like a window!”