HR0815 97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0815 LRB097 20638 GRL 66502 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of Representatives are pleased to congratulate Richard Howard Hunt for his many achievements as a sculptor; and

WHEREAS, Richard Hunt was born on September 12, 1935, in Chicago; he attended Chicago Public Schools before attending the University of Illinois in Chicago; in 1953, he attended the University of Chicago; in 1957, he earned his bachelor's degree in art education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; from 1957 to 1958, he traveled and studied in England, France, Spain, and Italy under the Art Institute of Chicago's James Nelson Raymond Foreign Travel Fellowship; and

WHEREAS, Richard Hunt served his country as a member of the United States Army from 1958 to 1960; and

WHEREAS, Richard Hunt is well known throughout the world for his abstract sculpture; he began sculpting in his teens, modeling in clay and carving in his bedroom at home; he later created a studio in the basement of his father's barbershop; as a teen, he was intrigued by metalwork at the African collection of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, where his mother, a librarian, frequently took him; his work in a zoological lab at the University of Chicago during high school and college contributed to his fascination with animal and insect forms; and

WHEREAS, From 1953 to 1957, Richard Hunt attended the Art Institute of Chicago, where he focused on sculpture, especially welding, and studied lithography; while at the Institute, he was exposed to the work of the sculptors Julio Gonzales and David Smith, to whom he has attributed inspiration to use direct-metal techniques to transform steel, aluminum, copper, and bronze into sculpture; using a welding torch as his mallet and chisel, he transformed found objects, scrap metal, and auto parts found on industrial sites into plant-like and insect-like forms; in 1959, he won his first award at an annual show for artists at the Chicago Art Institute; and

WHEREAS, By 1960, Richard Hunt had become a major open-form, direct-metal sculptor in the art world; at this time, he began to combine closed with open forms, calling them "hybrid figures"; in the 1970s, he added inventive Baroque flourishes to his forms so that solids seemed both to penetrate voids and to be penetrated by them; he later began to gradually move away from his early calligraphic work, instead turning to closed contours and solid shapes; and

WHEREAS, Richard Hunt has produced more than 130 public site specific sculptures, including a cross and candelabra for St. Matthew's Methodist Church in Chicago in 1970, Fight Forms for Midway Airport, and freeform for the State of Illinois Office Building (now James R. Thompson Center) in Chicago; he has created many other sculptures, color lithographs, and drawings, including memorials to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Freedmens Bureau; he has also recently been chosen to create a commemorative for Ida B. Wells in Bronzeville in Chicago; and

WHEREAS, In 1971, Richard Hunt became the first African-American sculptor to be accorded a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; throughout the years, he has received Guggenheim, Ford, and Tamarind Fellowships, and awards from the Art Institute of Chicago, including the Logan, Palmer, and Compana prizes; he holds numerous honorary degrees from prestigious universities and has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Academy of Design; he has also served on the National Council of the Arts, as a commissioner of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Art, and as a juror for Maya Lin's Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, D.C.; and

WHEREAS, In 2008, Richard Hunt became the inspiration for the "Richard Hunt Fine Arts Room" within the newly-built campus of Christ the King Jesuit College Preparatory High School in order to give young people the opportunity to pursue the fine arts and motivate them through his extraordinary example of creativity and his artistic vision; and

WHEREAS, Richard Hunt serves as a model of hard work, integrity, and dedication for the people of the State of Illinois; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-SEVENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we congratulate Richard Howard Hunt for his many achievements as an artist and thank him for serving as an exemplar in the African-American community and as a source of inspiration during Black History Month; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to Richard Hunt as a symbol of our esteem and respect.