Sculptor Richard Hunt fuses diverse influences
(Artdaily.org)

Art and experimental zoology aren’t the most obvious of pairings, but sculptor Richard Hunt worked in an animal lab at the University of Chicago as a teenager, earning money to pay for college. The result was an influence that has spanned his six-decades-long career, which is on view in “Richard Hunt: Synthesis.” This exhibition organized by the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia is on view from October 20 through February 3. Hunt has created more than 130 large-scale public commissions and helped change the role of public sculpture in the late 20th and early 21st century. He got his start in Chicago, where he was born. His father was a barber from rural Georgia and his mother a librarian, who encouraged his early interest in the arts by taking him to museums. When he was 13, Hunt began attending the Junior School of the Art Institute of Chicago,