Bill Hunt
Birth Date: 1946

Artist Gallery
At the end of summer of 2004, I began to rethink one of the most useful challenges I had met in graduate school. There had been a little-enforced requirement for graduation that was to make 500 to 1000 pieces in one academic quarter. Gene Friley, my advisor, goaded me into doing it and helped me build the skills and confidence to succeed. I still remember the rich feeling of spreading out all those pots for review in the art department courtyard. There were casseroles, pitchers, cups and goblets, bowls covered jars and lots of other forms. When I surveyed that landscape of pots, I knew I was going to love making my living as a potter. It had been almost 25 years since I took on a project like that but now I was interested in seeing if I could make 100 small bowls where each one was a small work of art and where each one was completely different in form and decoration. I envisioned them as one piece where the viewer could compare and contrast both decoration and form. Some days during this project I thought I couldn’t think of one more composition to put on a small bowl. Sometimes I would have to go to bed and try it again the next morning. In the end, this piece stretched my aesthetics in many new and interesting ways that I will follow up in future works. Bill Hunt 100 Variations on the Small Bowl, 2004