David Richard Contemporary is pleased to present Sculpted, the gallery’s first solo exhibition for Munson Hunt. The exhibition features a selection of recent sculptures made of reclaimed timber and flat wood panels to which a combination of sawing, chiseling, charring and burnishing with graphite was used to create the wall reliefs and free-standing sculptures. Also featured is one of Hunt’s newest materials, glass casts of eight-foot tall timbers that have been flamed and burnished to be nearly indistinguishable from its wooden counterpart.

Hunt’s art is organic and while there is a raw and natural component, it is elegant with the reductive forms and minimal surface treatments that do not change, but enhance and reveal the inherent beauty of the wood elements. Her work is about the environment, both its history and fate. There is an aspect of reclamation because she frequently uses fallen timber, but it is more than repurposing abandoned trees, it is a celebration of the life of the tree and furthering its lifecycle in a new and urban setting. Hunt’s latest body of work is comprised of a series of fallen cottonwood trees from a Nambe ranch—of human scale and larger, hand cut, charred and burnished with graphite. In installation, the stand seems disquieting at first, yet there is a serenity and a sense of satisfaction in knowing that the beauty and life of these trees endures in this new form.