Dean Hunter-Cutrona Bio
Painter, sculptor, and master carver Dean Hunter-Cutrona's life and art are deeply immersed in the worlds of skateboarding and science fiction and fantasy. Hunter-Cutrona's lifesized sculptures of skateboarders have been displayed in Stride-Rite stores in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. In 1997 Transworld and Thrasher, the leading international skateboarding magazines, featured Hunter-Cutrona's painting "Boston City", a vibrant painting of skateboarders in action that shows Hunter-Cutrona's deep love of Pablo Picasso, in full-page reproductions sponsored by Simple Shoes, a leading designer and manufacturer of footwear for skateboarders. Hunter-Cutrona's latest works include a series of intricate sculptures carved from vintage skateboards.Hunter-Cutrona's works include hundreds of pieces illustrating characters and settings from his own epic science fiction/fantasy stories. One such sculpture is a life-sized, fully poseable tiger whose skin peels back to reveal that the “tiger” is a mechanized transportation and weapons platform, a battle mount for members of Hunter-Cutrona's fictional nomadic “Tiger Tribe” warriors. Equally striking is his 7-foot-plus, fully-poseable, bright-yellow “Butterfly Assassin” robot. The robot's scientist-creator uses it to armor and empower his own brain, separated from his human body, in his battles with the evil, dominant corporations that rule his era. Each sculpture is backed by an extensive series of paintings that illustrate the worlds behind the sculptures.
In 1992, Hunter-Cutrona designed and installed renovations to the main concert room at the Rathskellar (a/k/a "The Rat"), then Boston's leading punk rock club, where the Police played their first Boston gig in 1978. When finished, the room was painted black, with images of rockers and rats in white on every vertical surface, and life-sized sculptures of rats everywhere. Hunter-Cutrona's major environmental installations include the "Skankytown" skateboarding park in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (1999), where he designed and built "the Volcano", a skate-able sculpture that was photographed by every major skate magazine in the world, skated by many top pros, and used as a backdrop for an episode of NBC's New York-based series "Third Watch". He is currently at work on a series of carvings in the main room of the new Brooklyn nightclub "Area 51."
Hunter-Cutrona's most recent one-man show was at the McCaig-Welles Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in October 2003. He has exhibited in shows at Boston's Museum School, the Boston Architectural Center Gallery, San Diego's Modart, and Boston's 88 Room. Hunter-Cutrona's paintings have been featured as cover art for CD releases by Boston's Seven League Boots and modern classical composer Richard Hunter. Hunter-Cutrona's studio in Roxbury, Boston has also been featured in articles in Balance magazine.
Hunter-Cutrona was born in 1965. He studied painting and sculpture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston, The Massachusetts College of Art, and the Art Institute of Boston. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York and Monroe, Connecticut.