Kyle Hunt's new exhibition is about looking inward to see what comes out.

"The past decade has been a period in which the inner work I need to do has become more apparent and imperative," Hunt said. "It’s difficult work to dig through one’s past and start fixing what got knocked over, broken, displaced, disfigured, etc."

The Ann Arbor artist's What What Happened Led To exhibit at Ypsi's 22 North gallery features abstract explorations and offbeat figurative works from the past four years, "mostly oil and acrylic paintings on canvas, as well as some gouache, acrylic, and ink paintings on paper," he said.

The exhibition runs from June 27 to July 25, with an opening reception on opening night, where Hunt will display another talent: poetry.

"The poems and the visual art all represent what it’s like for me to start rebuilding after a storm has blown through," Hunt said. "The journey of doing that difficult but necessary work."

But if poetry isn't your thing, don't fret.

"It will truly be a short reading. While I have written some poems since grad school, most of my time has been spent making paintings and drawings, so that’s the focus of the show," Hunt said. "I don’t want anyone tired from a long poetry reading, left with little energy for art on the walls."

The dynamic work in What What Happened Led To is infused with energy, but not directly or aggressively. The images can come across like scary dreams, but they are painted in pastel-oriented colors, giving the works a strange blend of subtle fear but no loathing. It's more like lucid dreaming, where you take charge of your sleeptime imagination and ride out the sensation—even if it's a nightmare—as if you're an omniscient narrator. 

I asked Hunt a few questions to understand his work, where the "bad dream has infiltrated a good dream."

Q: Tell us about yourself.
A: I'm originally from Lubbock, Texas, where I grew up playing metal music and eventually writing poems while studying creative writing at Texas Tech University. I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, when I was 28 and got accepted into the University of Michigan’s MFA in poetry a few years later. At the same time, I began teaching poetry to elementary students in Detroit through a program called InsideOut Literary Arts. In 2019, I started auditing some painting classes at U of M. I'd only done a little painting growing up, both inside and outside the classroom, and I’d never painted seriously, the way I had taken music and poetry seriously.

Although my art during those classes was nothing like it is now, that time was integral to my art-making because it allowed me the time and space to just make stuff. Much of what we did was meant to sharpen skills, but much of it was also just for me to discover what I like and what I want to make. After that, I continued making art steadily for the next six years or so. COVID hit during that time, which meant I was often at home making art. I also decided to go back to school, this time studying K-12 visual art education at Eastern Michigan University. I got to work with some artists/professors who were very influential to my process and gave me tons of space and encouragement to make what I wanted to make. I had enjoyed teaching poetry to elementary students in Detroit, and I was making lots of visual art now, so I decided to combine the two and teach visual art to kids in Ann Arbor, where I currently live with my girlfriend and our three cats.

Q: How would you describe your art style, and how has it changed over time?
A: My art style varies depending on medium and mood, but I usually straddle the line between playful and painful via cartoony and figurative paintings, mostly using gouache, ink, or both. Some of these works on paper are tattoo-influenced. I’m not trying to make tattoos, but I fell quickly for the bold lines and colors of traditional flash. Much of my art doesn’t touch that style, though, especially my acrylic and oil on canvas, which are often messier and less defined. These are usually the result of painting over a painting several times, leaving only what I like from the painting below, then adding to it, etc. I make canvas paintings knowing I’m probably going to paint over a good chunk of it anyway. The process is very stream-of-consciousness, always hoping to arrive at something that depicts an inner state of being, whether mine or yours. I find that my style follows my interests, changing periodically over time.  

Q: Who are your artistic influences? Some of your drawings and paintings reminded me of a grittier Jim Woodring, the comic artist. Other times, I thought your shapes-based works recall a grainier Ellsworth Kelly and Henri Matisse.
A: Firstly, I’ll admit that none of my influences are comic artists, at least not directly. I’ve never truly entered the world of comics. Not because I don’t want to or think I wouldn’t like that world; I’ve simply been too interested in other things and my brain can only handle so much. I’ve read some comics, just not enough to hold a discussion or claim influences. I can see the Jim Woodring you found in my work, though, and I like it; that stuff is wild. Outside of that, I do enjoy Matisse as well. I can see the influence there for sure.

Some other artists I feel influenced by are Sally Bourke, Hiroyuki Hamada, Laylah Ali, Philip Guston, and Misheck Masamvu, just to name a few.

I enjoy Sally Bourke and Hiroyuki Hamada both for their masterful and varied ways of layering paint/materials, not to mention their strange, devastating imagery. Laylah Ali creates narratives that are strange and devastating as well, though a bit more pointed and far more cartoony. Her work involves lots of planning. Philip Guston, I enjoy for many reasons, but mostly how he seemed to let his unconscious mind lead the way into familiar yet mysterious territory. His figuration kills me. He’s someone who gave me more freedom to draw my characters the way I want to draw them. Misheck Masamvu is an artist I discovered a couple of years ago and immediately loved. The energy his paintings bring is unlike other artists I know. They operate on multiple levels, showing more emotion the longer you sit with them. His way of simultaneously playing with abstraction and figuration is otherworldly.

There are also plenty of tattoo artists, but I won’t list them for fear of taking up too much space or leaving anyone out. I’ll just say that I’m influenced by tattoo art as well.

Q: A lot of your acrylic works have a gouache-like vibe about them, and then I saw you also work in gouache. Even your trippier works have a benign mellowness about them, where darker colors could push these works into nightmare territory. What is it about the soft-washed look and the generally gentle colors that keeps drawing you back?
A: Regarding the soft-washed, generally gentle colors, I think they help me achieve the mental space I want to depict, which is one in which a bad dream has infiltrated a good dream. Though the bad dream hasn’t fully taken over, it’s there pulling levers and pressing buttons that it shouldn’t. Dreams are often a fun place to be, but they are also one step away from becoming something else entirely. I think the gentle colors keep us grounded in that space of goodness while the imagery shows something else seeping in. Outside of that, I just enjoy the colors and the process of choosing them. A bit of intuition mixed with conscious decision is always at play. 

Q: How does your writing influence your visual art and vice versa?
A: In some ways, my writing and visual art influence one another. In other ways, they are separate. Both aim to say something this way because I can’t bring myself to say it that way. Art doesn’t need to speak any more clearly than it chooses to. The point is that it is speaking clearly in its own way. Both my writing and my visual art aim to depict the ever-fluctuating state between turmoil and tranquility, with most of my work focusing on the space where the two coexist, an in-between state wherein the environment is welcoming but not altogether friendly.

Christopher Porter is a library technician and the editor of Pulp. 

Kyle Hunt's "What What Happened Led To" exhibition is at 22 North, 22 North Huron Street, Ypsilanti, June 27 to July 25. The opening reception and poetry reading by the artist is on June 27, 6-9 pm. Hours: Saturdays and Sundays, 3-6 pm; First Friday: July 4, 6-9 pm.