The Burlington Free Press from Burlington, Vermont • Page 56

Page) 10OWeekend, Thursday, July 6,.1989 i i it 1 1 i 1 1 iVii vv 1 TTTT Til i 0 mmmmsy wntcim sum dug Stephen Huneck's success as an artist is a dream come true By Amy Killinger Free Press Staff Writer rtist Stephen Huneck's meteoric career is a dream come true. A In 1985, Huneck had left the 1 1 I I rr r- security of his life as an antique dealer to devote himself full time to making art. He was broke and had fallen behind on the payments for his St. Johnsbury house, which he feared would be repossessed. In the midst of this financial hardship, he had a vivid dream in which Kentucky folk sculptor Edgar Tolson told Huneck that he would become a great and successful artist.

In the dream, Tolson showed Huneck a museum in the future where visitors looked at his art and scholars studied it. Unbeknownst to Huneck, Tolson had died a few weeks prior to the dream. "I just knew from that dream that everything was going to OK," Huneck says. Then came some proof of Tolson's prophecy. Three or four days later, Huneck's gallery dealer in New York City called to tell him that one of his sculptures had sold for $10,000.

KAREN PIKE, Free Press KAREN PIKE, Frea Press Stephen Huneck's intricate wood carving begins in the workshop of his mind. The hands of Stephen Huneck often choose simple subjects. he driver's license I thought, 'Boy, are they Since that pivotal dream, Huneck's work has been shown at America's Folk Heritage Gallery and the Union League Club in New York City, and in galleries throughout Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., has added one of his carvings to its permanent collection. Other collectors include the Ford family and Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets.

Huneck's work will be included in an exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum in the spring of 1990, and he is negotiating with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City for a show there. A visit to the T.W. Wood Gallery in Montpelier, where Huneck's one-man show will be open through July 16, explains the artist's success. Huneck has filled the gallery with his primitive-looking sculptures and wall reliefs, remaking the room into his own whimsical, soulful world.

Cast bronze and aluminum sheep graze on the carpeting while overhead flies an angel who holds the leashes of winged cats and dalmations. In a corner is Huneck's "Dog Walker," a life-size, but flat sculpture of a woman walking two leashed black Labrador retrievers. "From a Dog's View" shows a dachshund on his hind legs facing a man whose skinny legs rise to an exaggerated height. The works range in price from $25 for a plastic pin to $9,000 for a piece of furniture-turned-sculpture. Underscoring the artist's wit is a vision of the world that is as compelling as it is playful.

Despite his simple subjects cats, dogs, fish, angels and devils his work is, as T.W. Wood Gallery director Jane Detora puts it, "not too cute. It has an edge to it." Huneck's slightly skewed perspective is apparent in the relief "Pillars of the Community," in which a dozen or so small, frightened-looking black figures are framed by arches. "When most artists do art they want to shock," Huneck says while sitting in the living room of his 18th century home. "I'm doing it in a nice way.

I'm touching people spiritually. Art is important because it reaffirms life." At 40, Huneck is a burly, mustachioed man with the self assurance of someone who, after a long struggle, has found his place in the world. He is friendly and shows a visitor through his house with unabashed enthusiasm. "Some part of myself stopped growing at age 8," he explains. But behind Huneck's child-like zeal there is a sharp intensity.

Sitting on his couch, he idles like a race car. The spring of his artistic soul is wound tight. Huneck lives with his longtime companion and assistant Gwen Ide on an isolated mountain outside of St. Johnsbury. He bought his house about 10 years ago when it was basically a shell, and has remade it into his own artistic vision.

His carvings are scattered throughout the house. He has added details like a dachshund head to the staircase bannister and kitchen cabinet knobs in the shape of fists. During the winter, the couple is often snowed in for days. To fill the time when winter storms cut him off from the rest of the world, Huneck began carving statues about seven years ago. He had first learned to carve wood in order to repair the antique furniture he had bought and wanted to resell.

Not long after he began carving, Huneck was running some errands when he caught a man going through the blankets in the artist's pickup truck. The man pulled out a small angel Huneck had carved and asked, "How much?" Not really wanting to sell the piece, the artist answered, "$1,000." To Huneck's surprise, the man bought it. It's not surprising that Huneck puts a lot of stock in fate and now believes he was destined to become an artist, although his vocation emerged relatively late in life. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Huneck grew up in a large, devoutly Catholic family, who moved to Sudbury, when he was a child. Huneck counts his Catholic upbringing as one of the strongest influences in his art.

"You're talking about people getting up from the dead," he says. "The imagery is very intense if you are a sensitive person." Add to that, Huneck's grandmother's doomsday revelation. When Huneck was a child his grandmother told him that God had revealed to her that the world would end in 1962. The young artist kept what his grandmother told him to himself, but he was convinced that the world was doomed. "When friends would talk about getting their says.

When the fateful year arrived and the world went on, Huneck confronted his grandmother. "She said, 'You believed Huneck recalls with a laugh. With the weight of the end of the world off his shoulders, Huneck says his grades improved and he became more outgoing. At 18, he left Sudbury and moved to Rochester, Vt. He became a carpenter and lived with a family in town.

The family's home eventually evolved into a commune, and Huneck headed for a more solitary life in St. Johnsbury. Huneck has become more accustomed to his seemingly instant success, although he still remains a bit awed by it. What he is not comfortable with, though, is the label of folk art, which has often been applied to his work. Like folk artists, Huneck is self-taught and consequently his work has a primitive look to it.

His images are simple and often out of scale. But, as he points out, he is not naive. Folk artists traditionally have little knowledge of fine art and take their images from the life around them. In contrast, Huneck is well aware of the world of art and his work has several influences. For one, his years as an antique dealer account for the 19th century look of his works, Huneck says.

Indeed, Huneck has picked up the passion our forebears had for embellishing the ordinary, and many of his works have a trompe l'oeil effect, which was popular during the 19th century. In addition to antiques, Huneck is inspired by his dreams. Huneck begins work each day in his studio accompanied by Shirley, his black Doberman pinscher, at about 3 or 4 a.m. when the sensation of his dreams is still with him. For Huneck, the artist's ultimate role is that of a shaman, who translates the spiritual world for the material world.

"Artists are really magicians," Huneck says. The artist's belief is displayed in "Making Art," one of his most personal sculptures. A self-portrait of the artist stands with mallet and chisel in hand. On his shoulder is a small white angel, also a self portrait, and at his feet the green hands and top of a horned head emerges. Who the devil is, we don't know..