Whitehot Magazine

The Birds and the Bees (and the Flowers & the Trees)

Entrance to “Huntopia” exhibition at San Antonio Botanical Garden.

By BRUCE HELANDER August 27, 2024

In a partnership with the San Antonio Botanical Garden and the Mays Family Foundation, internationally known artist Hunt Slonem is presenting his first major outdoor garden exhibition, “Huntopia: Bunnies, Birds & Butterflies.” His impressive, larger-than-life open air sculptural installations emulate the lush and vibrant realm of the artist’s signature neo-expressionist distinctive style partnered with nature as a tailor-made backdrop.

Hunt Slonem has always surrounded himself with the things he loves. He has a noteworthy obsessive Warholian collector complex, over decades gathering hundreds of curious objects, antiques, furniture, vintage paintings and multiple castle-like residences that serve as private homes and a personal platform for his remarkable collections and art. He also occupies an entire building in Manhattan, which serves as his studio and headquarters, and is home to his impressive flock of birds. Slonem is one of the hardest working artists rockin’ the world, with a remarkable schedule of exhibitions of his art that for the last four decades has been dedicated almost exclusively to replicating his cherished creatures, especially birds, butterflies and bunnies. For over forty years, Slonem has continued his daily routine of re-interpreting birds of a feather, fluttering butterflies and pensive rabbits, eventually expanding his familiar depictions to incorporate intriguing repeat patterns on canvas and board as well as commercially produced fabrics and wallpaper. My book “Hunt Slonem - Bunnies” (Glitterati Press), was a best seller and is a virtual bible of related imagery that demonstrates a remarkable cohesiveness and variety in one of his three preferred and most popular themes. “Hunt Slonem has found a new slant on hip-hop culture,” is a favorite line from this book. In his new installations the artist has successfully created fanciful, dramatic, picture-perfect three-dimensional objects derived from his chosen focus for a public garden environment.

Naya, Hunt Slonem

After hundreds of galleries and museum shows showcasing his two-dimensional representations during the past four decades, it was a natural extension of the artist’s unique talent to convert some of these images into three-dimensional sculpture. Several years ago, inspired by his iconic rabbit paintings, Slonem constructed large-scale soaring ceramic sculptures covered with a mosaic of shards of reflective mirror-like material. These works were an immediate critical success, not only for their instantly idiosyncratic, identifiable forms and serious fun but for their communicative ability to hop outside the artist’s normal repertoire. And although the works were well-liked and enjoyable in numerous art fairs and museum shows, the sculptures still needed a more logically related venue, as in a real-life living diorama that was able to organically accommodate the habitat of his furry and feathered friends.

The next step was a logical transition to properly highlight his large-scale sculptures into the context of an established botanical garden through his current exhibition at the San Antonio Botanical Garden (on view through November 3, 2024).

Sculpture gardens have a great history around the world, remaining vibrant and continuing to draw enthusiastic visitors. Incidentally, the oldest acknowledged collection of deliberate and decorative installations was unearthed in a Neanderthal “sculpture garden” in the South of France, where stalagmites were carefully bunched together within a public forum as possibly ornamental ring-like structures. The mysterious gigantic carved stone heads of Easter Island and the ancient Terracotta Army of thousands of soldiers discovered in a Chinese emperor’s tomb in 210 BCE demonstrate the early motivation to permanently enhance and populate the landscape with human-made forms.

Not surprisingly, the British were the originators and champions of public gardens accented with figurative sculpture. This transition made the concept of building adjacent magnificent towering glass houses an admired attraction that also protected the flora during the winter months. “Sitting in an English garden, waiting for the sun,” perhaps the most sedate lyrics in “I Am the Walrus” by the Beatles, nonetheless commemorate the intrinsic solitude and full splendor of Great Britain’s gardens.

Slonem’s colorful, fanciful garden sculptures have their own distinct visual language and fit contentedly in a spacious public environmental space. Sculpture parks are the original immersive experience, and this artist’s sculpture installation at the San Antonio Botanical Garden is no exception. Merging an art encounter with the land engages all the senses while offering a free flow of human interaction. Sculpture set in parks, complete with walkways, fountains and recognizable shapes, becomes a meandering ambulatory living stage set that encourages the visitor to fully experience encountering Hunt’s iconic portrayals of his beloved creatures.

Ascension, Hunt Slonem

History has shown us that placing sculpture within a landscaped garden is not a particularly novel idea, but it does continue to possess a unique and handsome character. Certainly, contemporary abstract sculptors like Mark di Suvero, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brâncuși, Christo, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Alexander Calder and Henry Moore have added a permanent grace and elegance to the public outdoor landscape. On the other hand, Hunt Slonem illustrates captivating renditions of playful creatures that have found a comfortable nest in a private outdoor arena.

Over 40,000 years ago, ancient Egyptian cave markings revealed avian images celebrating a winged creature’s spirituality, grace and ability to fly. Slonem follows a distinguished list of artists who have featured birds in their work, including Winslow Homer, Claude Monet and Andrew Wyeth, as well as noteworthy naturalist and ornithologist John James Audubon, author of “Birds in America,” the famous complete pictorial of all the birds in North America. Deborah Butterfield, who is world-renowned for her three-dimensional, life-sized sculpture of horses, intuitively connects to equestrian shapes because she grew up with horses and developed a special sensitivity to their proportions and gentle personality. Like Butterfield, Slonem also depicts an uncanny insightful perspective, having spent most of his life living with exotic birds, and they always have been his preferred permanent, rent-controlled tenants. Whenever he paints, he is surrounded by a chirping, sometimes squawking, winged choir that performs a perpetual and inspirational harmonic chorus.

The artist’s second love of rabbits is connected to an international symbol of good luck that signifies fertility and new life. Bunnies are associated with femininity, creativity, sexuality and anxiety, and have been a common subject for numerous artists. “Young Hare,” painted in 1502 by German artist Albrecht Dürer, had a nearly perfect pictorial accuracy centuries before photorealism. In Buddhism, rabbits symbolize humility, kindness and compassion, though in commercial America, they also are represented by the infamous Playboy Bunny uniform, which came complete with fluffy tail and satin ears.

Jungle Reverie, Hunt Slonem

The last component waiting to be fashioned from the artist’s palette is the enchanting butterfly. Thomas Gainsborough’s historic painting of his daughters chasing butterflies symbolized hope, freedom and poetry in motion. Paintings of these winged creatures date back almost a thousand years in Japan. These flying insects who pollinate our flowers have been portrayed in the past as dancers who Illuminated the outdoors with a rainbow of movement and grace like fireflies at night. The fragility, charm and innate loveliness of butterflies are also a symbol of confidence and optimistic metamorphosis. Their wings come in an amazing assortment of colors and patterns, and aside from being inherently beautiful their distinctive markings help butterflies to find a mate without a search on eHarmony. Their wings are covered in delicate scales, like colorful mosaic tiles, which create exotic visual effects such as iridescent shading, bright flashes and a metallic sheen along with astounding navigational skills. ‘Butterfly’ in formal Greek is ‘psyche,’ and the goddess Psyche is often pictured with butterfly wings. Native Americans consider butterflies symbols of transformation, metamorphosis, hope and rebirth, so Slonem has conjured up an enigmatic and poetic visual mix of color, form and spirituality that is attracting large crowds. Damien Hirst, another contemporary artist who incorporates butterfly imagery, created a series of famous (although somewhat distressing at first glance) large-scale works in which he assembled intricate concentric patterns made up of hundreds of butterfly wings and are reminiscent of stained-glass church windows.  

This exhibition is a pedestrian-friendly presentation that is full of surprises as it prompts the viewer to walk around nearly 30 acres of parkland. Unexpected and exciting discoveries are in store, as if one was visiting a metropolitan zoo without cages or taking a photographic safari deep in the jungle. Hunt’s lifelong affection for painting his treasured creatures has finally matured into a fascinating larger-than-life outdoor display that is memorable and appeals to both adults and children.

The mission of the San Antonio Botanical Garden is enriching lives through plants and nature, which draws an international audience that will surely be delighted with “Huntopia,” Hunt Slonem’s thoroughly magical and animated parade extravaganza.  

For more information on the exhibition: https://www.sabot.org/huntopia/ WM

Bruce Helander

Bruce Helander is an artist who writes on art. His bestselling book on Hunt Slonem is titled “Bunnies” (Glitterati Press), and Helander exhibited Slonem’s paintings in his Palm Beach galleries from 1994 to 2009. Helander is a former White House Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and is a member of the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. He is the former Provost and Vice-President of Academic Affairs at Rhode Island School of Design.

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