Craig: [00:03:19] We talk about referring to your work as exotica. You know, I feel like some of that comes from your childhood. A child of a military family, you kind of moved around to different places that kind of gave you a view of different sort of lifestyles and fauna and

Hunt: [00:03:38] And cultures and religions. And you know, I grew up in Hawaii for very formative period of my life and went to school with kids from Samoa and Fiji and Japan and China and Hawaiians. And, you know, many languages were spoken and we had Japanese neighbors and I used to hang out with the grandfather and he had a kind of amazing gardens that he had for half a century or more. And I learned so much about plants and my love of the orchids, and everything I paint comes out of those experiences. I get birds. As a child in Hawaii, I was influenced by Queen Lily of Galanis Palace, which was full of gothic revival furniture, which continues to be a great passion of mine and the act of. Taking plume areas and orchids for Lei, making when visitors would arrive. There's a funny story somebody did a piece in New York and people who'd grown up in Hawaii a bit and trying to bring in Dumbarton Oaks and Mar a Lago who built that. I'm trying to remember her name. Anyway, they lived in Hawaii and when people would when they would go there, the queen would cover them with leis to the point that they couldn't see over their heads. It's kind of Hawaiian hospitality and the flowers of each place. The peacock flower of Hawaii is just unlike anything else on Earth, and these memories hung with me and mesmerized me and kept me through some of the difficult moments of submarine on things and Polaris missile buildings that I was surrounded with. And then there were all these great mystical days can come in that day, and I was so excited about the Hawaiian Kings cloaks that took three hundred years to make out of a mammal bird tail feathers which are now extinct. And I've done a lot of installations with malted feathers in my birds. Based on that early endeavor or viewing of all of that. And then I was an exchange student in Nicaragua, in high school, which, you know, the wildlife of Central America surrounds me. To this day, I had up to 16 pet two cans at one point

Craig: [00:06:37] All at the same time. Yeah. Wow. You need a pretty big studio to hold 15 toucans, right?

Hunt: [00:06:45] Well, I had a 40 foot aviary in one of my studios. Unfortunately, birds soft build birds, which are my favorite only live to 20. And then you're lucky if they do. So I've been here since seventy three, so I've been through quite a few life cycles and the parrots make it forever. You know, they can live to 100.

Craig: [00:07:10] I think I heard you say that for your 16th birthday, somebody gave you an ocelot pelt and that is still it is still something that you kind of take inspiration from.

Hunt: [00:07:23] Yeah, I hold it in my hand and paint from it. I would never have one killed, but I derive great inspiration from looking at it and living around it. And I've done huge series of paintings of ocelots over the years. I was also given a 20 foot in a kind of skin. I don't know why, but my dream was always to go back there and found a national museum. But I don't know that that's going to happen. I kind of park myself in Louisiana as an alternative a little closer,

Craig: [00:08:05] Or at least at least find a house in Nicaragua to fill up with things, right?

Hunt: [00:08:10] Well, I've never been back. I haven't been back since nineteen sixty nine. I went back a second time right before I went to school in Mexico for a year. Anyway, I've never been back since the revolution, Somoza was in power when I was there and I went to Calais here, Central America.

Craig: [00:08:36] It was that before you went to Tulane or was that kind of in the middle?

Hunt: [00:08:40] Oh yeah, before, yeah, in the middle between Vanderbilt and Tulane

Craig: [00:08:45] Was was that a a culture shock for you having lived in these exotic locations, then winding up in Nashville and New Orleans?

Hunt: [00:08:55] You know, I have southern roots. My grandmother is from Chattanooga and my great grandmother and all that. My relatives over the South needs to visit the south. Traveling from coast to coast periodically. But going to school at Vanderbilt in my freshman year in high school in Washington state, I would say it was the biggest culture shock I ever experienced.

Craig: [00:09:16] New Orleans seems a little bit more mystical. Which kind of matches your vibe, right?

Hunt: [00:09:22] It's mystical, it's French. It has a history of being built by very aristocratic people with very refined taste and architecture and painting. And well, I shouldn't go too far there are plenty of bed ones, but I actually own a house that I studied in college. It was built by Henry Howard. I took Louisiana architecture as an elective, and that was fascinating. Anyway, I wanted this house for 30 years and I finally got it.

Craig: [00:09:59] When you left Tulane, you studied at Skowhegan for a summer. Right, right. And so for those that don't understand how special Skowhegan is, can you kind of describe what's going on out there on the farm?

Hunt: [00:10:13] Well, it's in Maine, which is the state I was born in by chance, was born on an island where my dad was at MIT. And so it's near. Waterville, Maine, it's inland, and it was founded by the Cummings family. Willard Cummings and his sister, Johnnie Fransen, who I adored and Jackie's benches started out, you know, Ellsworth Kelly was involved. Robert Indiana went through all its Katz went. There has a history of only 30 people. A summer went. There was quite. Oh, unique. They had killer stabs the summer I was there, Louise Nevils and Alice Neel was a guest. Alex Katz came Richard Estes. Betty Davis was there for three weeks, but it's a very small group and I had a lot of interesting experiences there as well, musically and artistically, and it really just hooked me into New York, and I had been so remotely educated and places that weren't really. There was no focus. Now Vanderbilt does have a program. They merged with Peabody, but. Tulane did, anyway, just got on. I just. And moved to New York after school, you know, I was told don't go to graduate school, just move to New York, and the first five years were really intense and hard and but I got a bunch of grants, which was great. I got a grant from Canada, which has always been very generous to me. The Greenfields Foundation grant and I got a. Nea and Genesis was very, very kind to me. I. See, I got a loft that he had done from Jack Deal when she decided to move, and that kind of anchored me for a while. Then I got my first show at Fishbowl Gallery in the Seventies. And. Anyway, wound up being with Marlboro for 18 years. And. Just the experience of kind of growing up in New York, I've lived here longer than anywhere. I've seen a lot and my brother moved here. He was a writer and my cousin wrote slaves in New York and. We met a lot of people over the years.

Craig: [00:13:10] New York was a much different place in nineteen seventy three

Hunt: [00:13:14] And was really edgy, wasn't all about money in those days.

Craig: [00:13:18] When you landed in New York, did you know anyone in New York? I mean, were there folks from Skowhegan? Yeah. Ok, so you had a handful of people in an artist community? And so what is it, four or five years before you were able to make those inroads in the gallery scene?

Hunt: [00:13:36] Well, I've been making inroads in galleries in does not assure you of making money, right? But I worked for the Cultural Council Foundation Artists Project, which is the recreation of the WPA. I was very lucky to be selected for that. There were only three hundred of us out of all the city and there were writers and poets and artists and weavers, and I got to do murals for the World Trade Center. I did something for Port Authority on forty third floor of Tower One, which is quite an experience. Joan Mondale came and inaugurated those I did the Saints for churches in Brooklyn. I did murals for schools and Harlem and. Brooke, one and just we're busy making public art

Craig: [00:14:32] In nineteen seventy five nineteen seventy six seventy seven, what did your art look like at that time?

Hunt: [00:14:39] Very flat.

Craig: [00:14:40] Ok. And you know, is that where you started working with with saints? I mean, it was your work figurative. What would we have seen?

Hunt: [00:14:51] I went through a big transition. In the late 70s into the 80s where I started painting animals and saints and got into a hole and they were very representational figurative, know Skowhegan, I painted landscape in the figure that was what we were did in those days. Now it's everything with names I can't even pronounce. So I just continued painting and I was around painters and I went to the Figurative Artists Alliance. Once with Alice Neel. Paul Georges was a teacher at Skowhegan. Anyway, I started painting saints from holy carts that I had amassed in my travels to Latin America and elsewhere. I basically was painting things that I'd collected in my travels that I traveled enormously from high school into my early years and continued to show all over the world in various capacities that we were from India to Haiti to Norway to OK. So the same thing, suddenly a lot of people were doing saints, and I was asked to be in shows. I was in a show called Stigmata Resurrection. We had to take classes and churches to be in some of these things. I did the whole thing on. Revelations, the book of Revelations, when anyway, it was very interesting and consuming, and I was in a show at NYU at the grade gallery called Precious, the Tom Sokolski put together in my painting was put on the cover of the Times art section on. Um. Easter Sunday and I was above John. Collins and genistein, so very famous for five minutes. Anyway, I've known her since, and she owns some of my work, but and her son, Sasha is a good friend of mine. But. And I got pieces of shrouds from. St Martin de Pourreza, I paint I actually. Went to the MacDowell Colony and to few others and painted saints there and had out-of-body experiences and all kinds of interesting things associated with doing it, but anyway, there was a lot of publicity about this and. I continue that for a while, and then I started leaving the figure out and just I always put animals behind them. That's where my rabbit system from. These things all started with the Saints.

Craig: [00:17:59] Your work nowadays, we think of it as being these images that are collections of butterflies or birds or rabbits in your life. You seem to be someone who likes to collect numbers of things. If someone were to tour around your studio, you may have 70 or 80 plants in one corner.

Hunt: [00:18:26] You know, 2000 feet of plants, right?

Craig: [00:18:29] You know, another space there, maybe a dozen harps or 20 top hats. Is there something about collections of things that gives you peace or inspiration or?

Hunt: [00:18:44] Well, they all feed my work and I, you know, I love going to flea markets. I've been using antique frames forever since my first shows that Big Show My Saints at VCU. Marilyn Zeitlin curated it and I had to frame all the paintings. I couldn't afford contemporary frames. And, you know, looking at flea markets for 19th century frames and then that. So it became a big part of the whole thing was gathering of stuff that inspires me. The top hats I share with the Lincoln paintings and doing more and more installation shows. And is wallpapers and fabrics that I do, but I save old furniture, I love sort of the time travel aspect of all of this. The armory is probably my greatest achievement in putting that into. All building. Um. Using these things that I find, they just grab me and I. Even if I don't like them, like I hated candlesticks, you know, like I have hundreds of them under table in a room filled with antiques that I say and do things to, I don't know. I think a lot of artists and collectors, certainly Warhol stop for a minute. I don't think it just comes with the turf. There's something about. Making art and collecting things, I mean, so many artists have been huge collectors and Gilbert and George, what? And it's again, something Mapplethorpe was a fanatic. You know, it's just part of the obsession of going about life. I need to have a certain amount of living things around me when I paint. My birds are highly intelligent and I actually ask their opinion and plants. It's essential for me to have a garden. You know, it's like urban jungle. You know, people say, Why do you think this stuff in New York? And, you know, it's like wired paint tigers and bears. I mean, why not? Anyway, it comes from within. It comes from other realms. I see it in my visions and dreams and meditations. And it's I have to have this to survive in this jungle. It's the rest of it.

Craig: [00:21:39] So your studio is thirty thousand square feet. I know that you've had to move several times because of

Hunt: [00:21:46] I've moved seven times in 20 years. Right? This is part of it,

Craig: [00:21:50] But it's a large space. A lot of it is used for display and things, but you're your working space is probably only what, fifteen hundred two thousand square feet of that.

Hunt: [00:22:05] This my work in space. But you know, I'm doing light boxes. I just did 50 drawings on big plexiglass. We've set up other studio activities. We have a packing and shipping thing and a whole 'nother thing. Downstairs we have about thirty thousand square feet and then there's a drying component to what I do. I paint Latin for wet and. Now, the oil often so things have to be not damaged, hopefully by hanging them. The new photography area, it's all we have shows that are out and you know, it's a lot of activity. We don't really not use any of this space at all. I don't think there's any amount of space shouldn't fill up on armories. One hundred and fifty thousand square feet. And I just thought a castle that's sixty eight thousand square feet and I'm already out of all states. Oh my gosh.

Craig: [00:23:14] Two questions. One -  What a the day in the life? and Two - What is what is your working environment when you're painting? I mean, is there music? Is it just the sound of the birds or the birds? Do you have a bird on your shoulder.

[00:23:27] I'm painting while we're talking art interviews, phone requests, I have a bunch of people that work with me and we have. Constant dialoging about what has to be done, and I listen to music often. I've been listening to Ray Charles a lot this week. Billie Holiday, I love exotic needs to be classical. I have a friend who's Bulgarian who lives near me. Upstate was a classical training and she is a she was supposed to attend at Carnegie Hall, but she has an incredible virtuoso. Recording that I listen to quite often, I love. All of that. You know what, I like other things, too, but sometimes they have music and sometimes they don't. During COVID, I seem to want silence. You know, but. I also I used to listen to music constantly. Just a background saying in a mood thing, sometimes you have to change the energy sound, so I can't hear every morning and I start painting, you know, I'm working on three things while we're talking.

Craig: [00:24:58] All right, so what can you describe those three things to us?

Hunt: [00:25:02] Well, they had to be set up yesterday. Their colors with. A metallic. Paint over them that we met, and then I'm doing a series of. Uses on that I call Ascension Butterflies. And then their cross hatched. And each Mark, I make Vietnam. And takes a long time. And I usually start out, although not today, I'll do it later. A series of bunny paintings, one of. Doing a lot with diamond dust, because right now. And. Then I tackle larger things, have a lot of commissions all the time, which is a blessing and a curse. I have to. Worked on several, but I work in Gillette, so I have to be very disciplined with my drawing and making sure it's just enough dry and wet to allow me to do what I have to do with the mark making and so on. And then, you know, surprise elements come through my work. I'm doing a new book. I just did a book. But the bigger picture is dollar. And all of interviewed me. A part of it and book is on butterflies, and I've looked through 50 years of butterfly things just blew me away to look at it because it's so. It's all the same subject matter, but they're all different, and it's like a meditation on weight, what I do to sing mantras and. Um. You know, the rosary, etc.. It's just this thing that comes through me. And the changes that occur are not sort of just that over time, it's kind of amazing and kind of field directed. By the universe,

Craig: [00:27:36] When you go back and view, 50 years of butterflies like do you like you said, you can see, I imagine some of those you

Hunt: [00:27:46] Look like snowflakes.

Craig: [00:27:48] Right. And I'm just wondering, like, do you ...can you see how things sort of changed? And remember, that was the year I went on a vacation to India, or that was the year I went here. And you can see how it changed the way you worked with color or the form.

Hunt: [00:28:09] Well, one of the biggest things that happened in my life was following. First of all, I almost never go on vacation. I used to go to India to go to and ask women to have shows. But I came back from India and turned around and looked at. My studio and. Look at the cages over 40 foot cage sections. And I just picked up a brush and carved it to a point. And. Started making process over it. The, you know, it's sort of contemporaries, what I'm doing it all kinds of grids and other people's work. I felt that the smartest things it was ever written was my first review in the Times I millions, but. Uncertainties include. Anyway, it was equated. My work was said that if Joseph Cornell painted, it would look like what I did and I didn't get it for his views. All this mash and birds and boxes completely brilliant comparison. It's never even occurred to me and I love corn now. Roberta Smith.

Craig: [00:29:45] And if Roberta Smith loves your work, then you've you've been sainted, right? You know, let's talk about your houses. So you, like you said you kind of gained inspiration from from Picasso, you know, buying chateaux and. 

Hunt: [00:30:00] Big, I was always fascinated by large homes, you know, castles. I was kind of thinking about castles. Yeah, my mother, even though she had Alzheimer's and I got the armories said, Oh, you always wanted it.

Craig: [00:30:19] Help me understand how you think of these homes. Do you do you think of them as your homes or do you think of them as

Hunt: [00:30:27] You know them, as art?

Craig: [00:30:28] Right? Because I mean, you know, I think of even someone like Anselm Kiefer has this estate in the south of France, where it's just like his playground for his work. Inside of these homes. How do you approach it? Is each room kind of a blank slate for you to create an installation?

Hunt: [00:30:47] Well, I installation. I'm kind of recreating in my vocabulary like I'm Fucking Castle was built by Mrs. Hopkins, was the railroad heiress and her husband, and they were from. Great Barrington and they came back and hired Stanford White to build this building, the first great houses of the Berkshires. He died while it was being built, the husband and she married her decorator, Mr. Searles. Since that time, and they only lived in, she died four years after it was built or something. So and then it became schools for all of its history. I'm the first person that's turning it back into a home or whatever it is you want to call what I do. So that's interesting in itself. It's like more than one hundred years of. Institutional use and repurposing it for what it was originally built for. And the staircase he had taken out of the former royal palace in England and two other councils in New Hampshire. Anyway, I'm having a free created and foot bath, so I'm kind of. I don't change anything radically, I play with color and things and. It's just like a jigsaw puzzle, the way these things fall together and they continually change.

Hunt: [00:32:27] I would say 20 years is a good time for me to play in one place. I don't make art often there, I have done sculptures in Louisiana and some of the big porches that I was commissioned to do. But I get more inspiration from stepping out of the studio. We have 90 acres at the council that bears on the bed. All those things feed my psyche and inspire me during the week where I hardly get out at all. But it's just this challenge of these huge places with a lot of movies that were made. Beguiled. The movie was filmed at one of the houses we had all the king's men, beautiful creatures like mist, which is fun also, and then I do books on the interiors. Which is, you know, just about art itself and leads to these documents of what's been done. But I find that I used to travel constantly for shows the last two years, not so much. I would bring things back from wherever I went even. Anyway, every corner of the universe that I've been to. But some incredible things and very appropriate

Craig: [00:34:05] As an outsider, whenever I look at them, I mean, I feel like they're all typified by explosive color on the walls. Gothic revival furniture and then your collection of of oddities or whatever's caught your eye.

Hunt: [00:34:24] I'm a big old Paris freak and. I probably one of the largest collections of Gothic revival scent bottles. I've had a lot of mentors over the years. To me, Anderson was one of them. Yeah, so it's just been a great fun part of what I do. And it seems the work completely. I'm really out of frame right now. Three hundred body walls in old Victorian photo frames.

Craig: [00:35:03] Tell me about your sculptures. How long have you been working with? Because I know you're working with Glass and you're working with. You know, I. And I think I've even. Are there smaller wooden ones? Also are my

Hunt: [00:35:19] Those is where it started. I've been doing wooden sculptures for 40 years and maybe my cats for projects. I did about 10 monumental sculptures in Louisiana. One little butterfly part. And I did want to to some veterans highway, and those are derived from my metal sculptures, but the other stuff is not coming from my wooden sculpture, which made my glass we do in Seattle and the bronze as well. And then the mosaics in California. I come up with all the. Drawings and. Ideas get a lot of commissions and whatnot, but it's just been a wonderful thing to see a hundred glass rabbits. He's brought a niece. Well, meaning of the word color in my life, things I never even thought of. Really?

Craig: [00:36:22] Well, I assume you probably work with fabricators and collaborate with them. And so how have you filmed that process? I mean, is it kind of made to order or do you find inspiration in what they bring, what they bring back to you? I mean, is it very collaborative?

Hunt: [00:36:42] Yes, it's completely collaborative. I've been to Seattle, I've flown glass directed and we come up with ideas. These trophy heads that are like a statement about all the gear that's been mounted and glass rabbits and all the backgrounds, which are not part of any animal, just but to the. So all kinds of ideas come out of it, it's not just one thing, but. We do show the rabbits in the shows and roofs off, and I'm also doing neon. That's been hugely successful in these light boxes, which came out of my travels to Seattle and drawing on site and coming up with these ideas. So it's added a whole new. Dimension to what I said here and do all day. I have a comfort zone. I kind of I don't think I feel abnormal, right? And I just have a stick in my hand and I'm making a sweetheart. And it's like every mark is a prayer kind of a deal.

Craig: [00:38:08] You're painting process is kind of a meditative practice for you. You know, maybe there is like a mantra that you are reciting in your head. Is it ever like a name or a phrase? Or is it just a lot

Hunt: [00:38:23] Of times I've learned, you know, been given different ones? It's a real moniker.

Craig: [00:38:32] And so do you find that you really rely on this meditative practice to to center you? I mean, do you ever go without painting for a day and just feel, you know?

Hunt: [00:38:45] Well, sometimes it's good to stop, you know, when I go to Louisiana? I just gather ideas. My whole body series is I'm out of cash and buy behind my houses and river, and I just come home and work from memory on a lot of that. So, you know, I think is a. He said, you know, anyone you're not, you know, I paint my dreams. I had a dream the other night about my ascension in blue and how I was. Weaving this whole universe with the smart making into the Blues and the silvers. And it was like real and wasn't just on canvas. It was interesting.

Craig: [00:39:39] So is that going to find its way into into a real painting?

Hunt: [00:39:43] Oh, it does every day something along that line? Yes, it was just a dream comment on what I'm doing, I guess. And I work with a lot of not a lot. I work with several. Energy workers in week two channels a lot of people and comments about color from people are no longer with us and it's really interesting. So it's coming from a lot of different places.

Craig: [00:40:17] I gather that you're a huge fan of color. Is there any one specific color that resonates with you more than any other?

Hunt: [00:40:27] I'm very fond of painting large spaces, blues and blues because it kind of are some mystical. So without. Specific space, like a huge, always rich, rich, rich blue, I just did a over the staircase of the castle on a blue, I covered some hideous wallpaper and I don't like wallpaper. This was not right. It didn't change the energy of the whole place. But people, I'm very fond of reds and yellows. I would say those are my three. Favorites yellow. Really good to speak with and makes you feel great and red is very centering. And makes everything look phenomenal against it. And then talking once in a while, white on it, everything goes when you look at it, your ad goes to the edge of the painting of a wall color, which museums are doing. Finally, again, here your eye goes to the middle of the painting. That better way of. Viewing that. And I love I love salons. I remember going to the Redwoods Museum in Washington as a kid, which was a typical Victorian salon style thing with poofs to sit on and the whole. So that's sort of what I do with the houses as well, I love. Gathering little things and huge groups, filling odd spaces.

Craig: [00:42:17] If somebody wanted to keep up with you and your work is your is your website the best place for them to keep track of you? 

Hunt: [00:42:25] Well, it gives you all the galleries that are showing and what shows are coming up, and it has a lot of other information on it. Probably. huntsolem.com

Craig: [00:42:37] Is there anything big on the horizon that we should be looking out for?

Hunt: [00:42:45] The National Gallery and yeah, I'm having a show. It's Ross Museum. And this summer I'm having a show museum in Germany outside of Cologne. I'm doing a show at the National Arts Club. It's just been redone. They just did a Warhol, and it does it. So very excited to be a big installation in April. I honestly can't remember I had so many things going on, I just did a big show in Texas and Florida and Montreal and California, just so in La Hoya actually dealt with. Anyway, my website would tell you,

Craig: [00:43:41] That's a lot, Hunt, and describing that makes me think of another question, which is how big is your team? Because it sounds like too much for you to try to keep.

Hunt: [00:43:51] We're about 15. The and I probably have money five between the houses in the studio now. Not all one hundred percent. You know, I have somebody that comes in to see the animals every day of the year to the most wonderful for me for forty four years. A lot of people, a lot of fans, a lot of turnover, right? It's hard to keep it together anyway. Here every day and wake up is full of things to do. And I'm so grateful that I'm busy and not bored, and I meditate at night and work with energy workers a lot and. So my prayers and prayers and, you know, spirituality is the only thing that's kept me afloat. Some near-death experiences, unless it's in years. And here I am back at it and I'm excited about it. It's very early for me. Sometimes it's a little hard to not have enough breaks, but. It's great.

Craig: [00:45:10] I should let you get back to your Ray Charles music, but whenever I think of you, I'll think of you with a stick in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. Odds are that's probably what you'll be doing at that very moment. I really appreciate you being so generous with your time today to make you.

Craig: [00:45:39] That's all the time we have for this week. You've been listening to art since you can find the show on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher Radio, Spotify or your favorite podcast app. If you've enjoyed this podcast, be sure to subscribe. And while you're there, please rates show and leave a quick review. Your feedback is the key to other folks finding us. If you'd like to see images related to the conversation, read a transcript and find other bonus features. You can go to Canvia Art. And click on the Podcast tab. If you'd like to reach out to me, you can email me at craig@canvia.art, thanks for listening.