Stanton Hunter
September 10th - October 29th, 2011
Fifth Floor Gallery is pleased to present Stanton Hunter's, "Migration Grids 3.0" which is inspired by the invisible migration grids* of the Monarch butterflies and imagines what it would be like if humans could see this hidden phenomenon. Explorations into how the grids might actually appear are expanded to include computer generated 3D grids, fractals, maps, nests, spider web cocoons over prey, and bamboo roots. Visual connections start to be seen from microcosm to macrocosm as the gallery space is conceptually transformed into a sky-viewing platform from which to follow the grids.
Hunter uses a very terrestrial material, clay, to make something celestial. Earth, associated with mass and permanence, is translated into these shifting, ephemeral, and ethereal sky-forms. The work is about more than the ceramic forms, as they encompass void more than object and the complex shadows they cast are immaterial. But together, the objects and shadows point to what can’t be seen, at least by the human eye.
Hunter has been an instructor and guest lecturer at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, ran the ceramics program at Scripps College in Claremont for five years, was a visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Pitzer College also in Claremont, and is currently Associate Professor of Art at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga. He received his MFA from the University of Southern California in 2000 and he did his undergraduate work in perceptual psychology/alternative education at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida.
"Monarch Butterflies making their annual migration from the eastern United States to winter residences in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountain ranges find their way by following a three-dimensional map of polarized ultraviolet light, a study has found. Though UV light is invisible to humans, to butterflies it appears as a grid in the sky that emanates from the sun..." -Science File of the Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2005. Research findings of Dr. Adriana Briscoe, UC Irvine, and Dr. Steven Reppert, U Mass Medical School.