Sculptor

Jim Huntington

Jim Huntington was born in Elkhart, IN, in 1941, has lived in L.A., Boston, San Francisco, and NYC.

Huntington started working in stone in the mid-1970s when he was in NYC. The first stone sculptures were Pennsylvania Bluestone combined with carbon steel or Corten steel, or stainless steel.

In 1978, he started working in granite and had continued to use granite almost exclusively. There have been occasional forays into the wood as a material and cast bronze and copper.

In 1994, he moved from NYC to Coupland, TX. In 2000, he set up the sculpture garden and studio in its present location at the corner of Hoxie & Broad Sts.

Major works by the sculptor are in the permanent collections of Stormking Art Center in Mountain Ville, N.Y., Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, N.J., and Kansai Gaidai University, in Osaka, Japan, as well as many private collections.

Wells Mason shot this photo in his ongoing series of portraits of artists.

Information for the Public

The Huntington Sculpture Foundation is a 501 C 3 non-profit. The sculpture garden is available to the public 365 days a year, and the studio is open on most days and can be open by appointment.

There is no admission; however, tax-deductible donations in any amount are gratefully accepted.

WRITINGS

Space the final frontier or the third element

June 18th, 2004, George Neubert visited my studio and sculpture garden. He had a generous, informed response to my work and suggested that I write about space as it manifests itself in my work.

I remember, as a child, being fascinated by enclosing and embracing spaces. I knew and cherished every secret space in our old two-story house, from the fruit cellar and coal bin in the basement to little hidey holes under stairs and under the roof at the back of my parents' closet. It may have been the enticement and comfort of a private sanctuary space, scaled to a child's body and sense of containment. I used to dig complex underground "forts," with tunnels and passages just big enough for my child's body to pass.
Space can embody and imbue mystery in sculpture and in architecture.

One of the most resonant books I have ever read in my life was Gaston Bachelard's "Poetics of Space," a loving paean to the ineffable mysteries of space.

Space, to me, though more evanescent, is as important as the materials in my sculpture, therefore, its designation as the third element.

Internal or semi-enclosed space first emerged in my sculptures in the '70s, when I started combining wood and steel and became truly manifest in the quantum leap to combining stone and steel. The first spaces were such that they could be looked into, often reached into but not physically entered with the whole body, because of the scale.

The spaces were often slot-like in nature.

The pieces of this period were bluestone (slab-like stone native to upstate N.Y. and P.A.) combined with carbon or corten steel. The space in these sculptures was darkly mysterious, somewhat due to the materials.

The first granite and stainless steel piece that had a human scale space between the stone and steel was "Inheritor," done in 1977 and is now in the permanent collection of Storm King Art Center in N.Y. The piece is roughly my own height, just under six feet. Followed closely, the same year by "Dayton," granite and stainless steel, in the permanent collection of Laguna Gloria Museum in Austin, TX. The stainless steel of these outdoor pieces yielded a light quality and generated a complex interaction or tension between the massive volume of the stone and the slicing planes of the steel. The light and ambient color reflected by stainless steel enlivened the enclosed or contained space.

Little did I know that my first encounter with Texas, doing that sculpture in 1977, planted a seed that would come to fruition more than a quarter-century later. By 1994, I was forced to accept that the N.Y. art world had become an intolerable and unrewarding experience for me, not unlike being a "stranger in a strange land." I felt alienated as well as exiled from an art world that no longer provided sustenance.

I chose to move to a small town outside Austin, where my work has developed and grown apace, if even apart from any valorization and or recognition from that world that I turned my back on, in a sort of mutual disdain agreement.

For the first years here, TX was a healing place, and like musicians "woodshed," I delved into the vast and welcoming environment of the old west and searched paths heretofore unseen. For a long time, I resisted doing what ultimately became a series of works that I came to refer to as "Imaginal Bodies," which were vaguely suggestive of anthropomorphic and enigmatic shaped bodies or some variety of living things. I abhorred them and resisted doing them, but they were so insistent that I had to do them, to work through whatever they meant. I am still not sure about their meaning to me. Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, N.J bought one of the best pieces of that period for their permanent collection.

In 2001, I was ferreted out by an intrepid woman named Yasuyo Kudo, representing Town Art in Tokyo, who ultimately commissioned a piece for Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka. That commission rekindled an interest in the work I had done in the 70s and 80s, combining stone and steel and enclosing space. I realized that it was still very vital and alive within me and had simply been in abeyance out of lack of external interest as well as lack of funds.

The whole Japanese experience, a week in Kyoto, was one of the greatest spiritual tonics of my life. It was truly God's grace guiding me back to the path I had strayed from.

Since returning from Japan almost 3 years ago, I have had one of the most fecund periods of creativity of my life, creating many major sculptures, the best work of my life. I have thrown all fiscal caution to the wind in order to do my work. I am 63, in reasonably good health, but humble enough to know that at this age, there are a limited number of years left for the rigorous and demanding energy necessary to do my work.

I bought a 10,000 lb Hyster forklift, which is the greatest tool I have ever had. It has enabled me to up the scale of my sculptures so that people can now fully enter some of them.

Contemporaneously with the increase in the possibilities of scale, I realized that I not only wanted to be able to create spaces that could be physically entered but visually opened, as well, as in, seen through and into. I am captivated by a suggestion of translucence and lightness of weight and well as spectral light. I am accomplishing that now in stone by drilling holes or making slot-like openings through some stones and in steel, by plasma cutting slots or holes through the steel, in some sculptures, which gives them a strange "veil-like" quality. The first piece of this new series was "Inari Guardian," a modest scale piece. The stone had a texture and form that I wanted to reveal through the steel, and the concept of cutting slots in the steel occurred to me to make that possible.

Probably the greatest surprise to me was the way the light slicing through the slots in the steel plays on the sculpture, constantly changing as the sun makes its transit. In this case, it almost as if the light becomes another texture or palpable element.
One of the first large scale pieces of this new series is "Winter Veil." I am now working on the second "Veil" "Pass Veil." Both these pieces have internal space that can be entered fully by humans and are opened visually through the slots cut in the steel.
I have always been fascinated by contradiction or duality, as a metaphor as well as material, with the disparate materials being the manifestation of these qualities.

I have also been combining stone and cast bronze in pieces that I call loosely the "Mask Series." The space is often opened through the both stone and bronze, at the same time containing or capturing a dark and more intimate inner space that can be intuited as well as seen and investigated by those curious enough to approach the sculptures and peer into this dark interior space.
My intention is to energize space and make it an important (third) element of the sculptures and every bit as resonant and palpable as the physical materials.

What I have come to realize is that I am in the end game of my life as an artist. Having abjured any and all distractions from doing my work, I have a laser-like focus and total, nearly maniacal commitment to executing as many sculptures as I can in the time allotted to me. I know that on faith alone, I am buoyed and in full stride doing these sculptures. I'm grateful that the best has been saved for last and that revelation is still possible, as new possibilities keep percolating to the surface, with each sculpture becoming a further unfolding.

Midwest Museum of American Art exhibits Elkhart native Jim Huntington

A Visit With Local Artist Jim Huntington v2

Statement

Many times, I feel the essential energy that brings a sculpture into being flows not from me but through me. I accept a lot on faith: the faith that this endeavor is basic and necessary to the greater human enterprise: that art can be a repository of ineffable spiritual values.

Humans' first impulse to beauty, the first act of aesthetic consciousness, was the selection and collection of "special" rocks or pebbles; these collections have been found in caves predating mimetic or symbolic cave art.

My engagement with the materials is a dialogue of two natures: that of the material and my intuitional sense of touch, drawing and my vision of beauty. I work not merely willfully but allow the potential unique to each material to speak as well, to let their nuances prevail.

Whether by hand or by collaboration with craftsmen in fabrication, I act in concert with that dialogue. Drawing in its widest sense plays a major role in how I act.

The ultimate challenge is to articulate and transform the materials and to claim space in such a way that all the elements maintain their integrity yet transcend their inherent identity to cohere into a presence imbued with autonomous life, manifest as a metaphor of human feelings, reveries, and aspirations.

This is a trace of my encounter in the world, focused and embodied in formal plastic terms: it is my affirmation of the boundless human spirit and the mystery of existence.

I believe that, as the result of some genetic mystery, certain of us have an inherent predilection for a specific activity in life. It has always seemed inevitable to me that I be an artist.

At the time I was born, my father was a blue-collar worker in a factory and, over the years, worked his way up to a white-collar job. By both example and instruction, he taught me respect for the simple, basic values of our

Midwestern community: hard work, integrity, and dignity. He gave me a sense of my own worth and the courage to act. I believe that inspiration, diligence, and perseverance will ultimately get me what I want.

In my earliest consciousness, I remember having a sense of infinite possibility ... to dream, to become, and though I've always been a dreamer, the pragmatism of the puritan work ethic has been my tether to the earth.

Over the years, I've grown to deeply appreciate and understand the values that were imbued in me at an early age and to feel them as a source of sustaining strength in pursuing my vision as an artist.

Tale of Titles

As of late 2009, there are over fifty large-scale sculptures in granite and granite combined with copper, cast bronze, stainless steel, and weathering steel in the sculpture garden of the Huntington Sculpture Foundation, accessible to the public 365 days a year. All sculptures have titles, even though there are no title plaques beside the individual sculptures.

There are various stories behind the titles of my sculptures. I have always loved words, and sometimes a title will be a play on words, among other things. Sometimes they come from events that occur close to or during the time I am working on a sculpture.

During and just after 911, I was working on "Let’s Roll,” a commissioned sculpture for Kansai Gaidai International University in Osaka. I was deeply affected and impressed by the incredible heroism of so many people that day. The words that stuck in my mind were the memorable last words of Todd Beamer on ill-fated United flight 93, when he uttered, “Let’s roll” as he and fellow passengers went on their deadly mission to thwart the terrorists. I wanted to commemorate the valiant and courageous act personified by all those who gave so much that day, including their lives.

“Kamogawa Crossing” refers to the Kamogawa River that runs through Kyoto and commemorates the glorious week I spent there in Feb ’02, while installing the sculpture in Osaka.

Some sculptures are dedicated to persons I admire, such as “Wedgie,” dedicated to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the beautiful and incredibly brave Muslim woman who stood up against the radical Islamist butchers who killed her colleague and put a fatwah on her. “Wedgie” also refers to the prank practice of adolescents, yanking up someone’s underwear to give them a “wedgie.” Hirsi Ali gave the murderous terrorist thugs a royal wedgie. The title also reinforces the overall shape of the stone, which is a wedge.

“DeKooning’s Door”
Willem DeKooning, the Dutch American painter, was one of my early heroes. I always liked the title of one of his paintings called “Door to the River.” So the sculpture is dedicated to the artist and is a play on his title. It also describes the sculpture in part because there is a door like opening into the sculpture.

“Curtain for Miles” is dedicated to Miles Davis, a musician I have admired since I was a teenager and whose music can still bring tears to my eyes after all these years.

“Hiromi Mon Amor” is dedicated to a very young but incredibly talented and beautiful piano player named Hiromi Uehara, whose music can also move me to tears. The title is also a play on the classic movie of the 60s, “Hiroshima Mon Amor.”

“Ringing in My Eyes” is dedicated to my lifelong friend from my hometown and the first artist I ever met, Ronn Johnson. Ronn died in 2003 at age 66 from melanoma. The sculpture is also a play on words and is a description of the fact that the granite has 6 cylindrical holes bored through it, and the stainless steel that embraces it has 6 much smaller corresponding holes cut through it.

A recent piece is titled “Blind Seven” or “Blind 7” and came about when my neighbor, his son, and wife were building two deer blinds which had openings in them in shape, not unlike the opening in one of the two stones of the sculpture. The openings in the two different color granites combined to make a “7” which is only a subtext and not an intentional comment or content. Incidentally, it is the number of the race car Danica Patrick drives in the IRL series. I have a typical old guy’s crush on the darling young raven-haired spitfire, so it is dedicated to her.

Adding to the “strong women” series is “Crack Back Remix for Sarah Palin,” another powerful woman I have great admiration for. She is not unlike my own grandmother, who had a passel of common sense and wisdom, that seems utterly lacking in today’s Ivy League-educated academic and lawyerly drones, that have seemed to usurp politics, much to the detriment of the constitution, our founding principles, and personal liberty.

Some titles are an echo of the physical nature of a specific piece: “Loafy,” which resembles a slice of a loaf of bread. It struck me as a whimsical title and piece.

“High “Open” refers to the opening in the sculpture, which is literally a high opening.

“Split Ascending” is based on the natural split in a stone, which was broken in two when I discovered it in the quarry, and I knew that I wanted to utilize that natural break in the granite. I combined it with copper, and the play between the copper and stone is heightened by the split. I chose ascending rather than descending in the title, seeing it as the positive of opposites.

“Winter Veil” was the first of two “veils.” They are both sculptures combining stainless that has slots cut in the steel, combined with stone. The steel acts and a physical and metaphysical veil for the stone and follows its purpose of adding visual/emotional mystery to the sculptures, especially as the sun moves through the sky and “paints” ever-changing textural shadows across the stones.

The second veil is “Pass Veil,” and that title is also a play on words.

Some titles refer to states of mind and emotions, such as “Dwellings and Transit,” which was done during a period when I was dreaming nightly about buildings I had lived in and means of transportation, like trucks, planes, and the subway. The dreams were upsetting and disconcerting because I was always trying to “find my way” and was getting lost, and when I did find a dwelling, it was altered in some dispossessing way. This series of dreams continues to this day.

One of the most emotional titles of a sculpture is “Cap the Well of Memory,” referring to the loss of love and the struggle to rid me of her aura. It was done during the Desert Storm campaign, and I had the image of the burning oil wells in my mind and saw it as the enflamed emotions spurting to the surface, and I wanted in the worst way to cap or extinguish the anguish.

“Kissy Face” refers to the two stones that comprise this sculpture being flush, face to face.

“Zatoichi Sky” a granite and cast bronze sculpture through which you can see the sky because there is a slot in both the stone and the bronze that line up. I was viewing the sculpture in its final stages before I patined the bronze, and the sky reminded me of the wonderful skies in the Japanese movie series “Zatoichi, The Blind Swordsman.”

One of my most recent titles includes the 2009 granite sculpture, comprised of two different color granites entitled ”Shall Not Be Infringed,” intended to revivify one of the bedrock values of our nation, the 2nd Amendment, which sadly is under attack by a plethora of people.

Jim Huntington

Information for the Public

WRITINGS

VIDEOS

HSF Board Members

Jim Huntington

Candace Garcia

Wells Mason

Sylvia Summers

Malcolm Berg

Richard Battaini