LONG BEACH, CA.- Transforming Vision: The Wood Sculpture of William Hunter, 1970-2005 is the first retrospective exhibition of the work of seminal American artist William Hunter, a native of Long Beach who is currently based in Rancho Palos Verdes in Los Angeles. The exhibition documents Hunter’s emergence as a sculptor of groundbreaking significance, presenting 70 works borrowed from public and private collections throughout the United States. Featuring work produced over the past three decades, Transforming Vision demonstrates Hunter’s artistic development beginning with utilitarian objects such as bowls, clocks, pipes, hand mirrors and candle sticks and continues with his exquisite decorative forms in a variety of rare and exotic woods. The exhibition also explores work produced in collaboration with his wife Marianne Hunter, a nationally prominent enamelist and jeweler.

Hunter is one of the few American artists working today who entered the field of contemporary wood sculpture in its formative stages in the early 1970s. As fellow artists, historians and critics alike have observed, his early forms in wood exploited the material’s rich expressive potential and advanced a new direction for the entire field of contemporary wood sculpture. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Hunter led the field as the medium evolved from its foundations in traditional woodturning practices to its emergence as a vehicle for artistic invention and formal experimentation. Today he is considered among the foremost figures in this important field and has been selected to receive the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the Collectors of Wood Art, a national organization of artists, collectors, scholars and critics, in November of this year.

Organized by independent curator Kevin Wallace for the Long Beach Museum of Art, Transforming Vision will embark on a national tour in 2007 and 2008 after it leaves Long Beach in December of this year. The exhibition will be presented at the Oakland Museum of California from January 20 – March 18, 2007; at the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, Alabama from April 20 – June 17, 2007; at the Wood Turning Center in Philadelphia from October 6 – December 8, 2007; and at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts from January 19 – May 4, 2008. Accompanying the exhibition will be a 128-page, fully illustrated catalogue with an introduction by Long Beach Museum of Art Director Harold B. Nelson and a major essay by Kevin Wallace on Hunter’s work and its role in advancing contemporary wood sculpture.

Transforming Visions is made possible at the Long Beach Museum of Art and other host institutions on the tour through the generous leadership support of the Windgate Charitable Foundation and other contributors including Pasadena Art Alliance, Fleur S. Bresler Foundation, and David and Ruth Waterbury. The Collectors of Wood Art is responsible for the generous sponsorship of a symposium to be presented at the Long Beach Museum of Art on Friday, October 6, 2006. An audio tour produced by the Museum and narrated by guest curator Wallace, will be available for rental during the exhibition in Long Beach.