San Antonio is well known for its location along the annual monarch butterfly migration route, but is it prepared for a fluffle of giant bunnies?
Visitors to the San Antonio Botanical Garden will find out on Saturday when the Huntopia: Bunnies, Birds & Butterflies exhibition by New York artist Hunt Slonem officially opens.
Garden guests have already been greeted by a grouping of giant, colorful ceramic and iridescent glass-tiled bunnies festooning the garden’s entrance. Towering toucans and bubbles of butterflies await in the acreage beyond.
Installation of the massive bunnies, birds and butterflies throughout the garden grounds has been ongoing, said the botanical garden’s interim CEO Katherine Trumble and Lisa Corbett, vice president of marketing and visitor experience.
The artist, on hand for a presentation to media on Tuesday morning, seemed at a loss for words when introduced. “The scale is just beyond my belief, that it could happen in such a wonderful way,” he said.
Big numbers, big bunnies
The exhibition is the first of its kind on several levels. Huntopia is the first major exhibition of outdoor sculpture by Slonem, notable for his large-scale expressionist paintings of flora and fauna.
The exhibition is also the largest, most elaborate ever undertaken by the botanical garden, Corbett said, and can be described in impressive numbers: five years in the making; six 52-foot-long trucks to deliver seven tons of art from locations around the country; and 15 days to install 25 multi-sculpture vignettes interspersed throughout the 38 acres of the garden.
But those numbers fade when greeted by the lighthearted whimsy of Slonem’s art. Even the largest bunny sculptures seem shy and ready to bolt despite their showy pearlescent and mirrored surfaces in a rainbow of hues. A comparatively little turtle peeks at visitors to the Japanese-themed garden pond, while a tower of colorful butterflies glints in the sun nearby.
“My work, because of its nature aspect and some of its simplistic components, seems to appeal a great deal to children and inspire them,” Slonem said.
Indeed, on Tuesday morning the garden teemed with huddles of children running around yelping and giggling at a variety of Slonem’s work, including a collection of multi-hued butterfly-covered spheres in the outdoor atrium of the garden’s conservatory.
Inspired by orchids
Slonem has lived and traveled throughout the world, from a childhood stint in Hawaii to studying in Nicaragua and living on the East Coast of the U.S. from Maine to Virginia.
He said orchids have been a primary inspiration, honored in Huntopia with paintings made and installed in the conservatory’s orchid house. The uniquely ornate varieties of orchids are joined for the duration of the exhibition by a pair of Slonem’s signature bunny paintings.
Planning such an elaborate exhibition on such a large scale was accomplished through many calls and videoconference meetings with multiple art fabricators, garden management and staff and logistics experts, Slonem said, but all throughout he kept his artist’s mindset at the forefront.
Looking at overviews of how the art would populate the botanical garden, Slonem said, “It’s like painting a painting, figuring out how to fill the environment and have the greatest impact.”
The exhibition’s impact will outlive its installation in San Antonio through Nov. 3. Trumbull and Slonem said the intent is for Huntopia to travel to other botanical gardens throughout the U.S.
But for the moment, San Antonians have the exclusive first view, Trumble said. “This is an immersive art exhibit unlike any other and the city of San Antonio is the first to experience it.”
Huntopia: Bunnies, Birds & Butterflies is accessible with regular botanical garden admission.
