APEX: Kate Hunt
May 10, 2014 – Aug 31, 2014
Growing up where the Great Plains stretch endlessly eastward, Montana artist Kate Hunt speaks of the vast landscape, marked by the cyclical passing of time, as a muse imbued with possibility. Overwhelmed by the vastness, she learned to focus on minute detail— the native grasses’ changing color or a moth’s wings mimicking tree bark became inspirational.
Today, attention to detail and a love of natural materials inform her sculptural stacks of laminated newspaper and “mummified” notices of the Congressional Record. Floor is an installation of 30 narrow, 10-footlong beams fabricated of carved newspaper. The subtle, striated effect of the stacked paper resembles sedimentary layering found in formations near the artist’s Kalispell home. The wall relief Congressional Record, constructed from bundles of the Congressional Record, serves as a mute chronicle of our too-often laborious governmental process. Hunt’s two delicately powerful monuments from society’s recorded moments echo the repetitive forces of nature at work on the landscape.
APEX is an ongoing series of exhibitions of Northwest-based artists, curated by Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art.