HUNTER HERMAN was born in New York City in 1955 and is a sansei, that is, a third generation of Jewish and Japanese descent. He attended Hackley School in Tarrytown, NY, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY and Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design, Los Angeles, CA. He was a bio-chemistry pre-med major before switching to the fine arts and music. His early influences were from his parents, Elliot Herman and Masako Tsuzuki and his grandfather, Takashi Tsuzuki, all artists. He sites Julio Gonzales, David Smith, Anthony Caro and Seymour Lipton as his modern influences.

Sculpturally, Herman works mainly with metals such as steel, stainless steel, aluminum and bronze using welding, forging and roll or bend forming. He has a considerable industrial welding and fabrication back ground which comes into play in his work in terms of scale and techniques and draws from the old school tradition of hand forging and finishing as well as modern welding, casting, fabrication and patination. He has also worked on architectural commissions that included a rail project which used the very modern water jet cutting process on the steel prior to welding. Most of his work uses the direct metal technique, but even the castings incorporate fabricated elements and get hand worked extensively. Herman has also worked with and on other notable artists’ works such as Frank Stella, Julian Schnabel, Jeff Coons, Anthony Quinn, Alexander Lieberman, Anthony Caro, Pousette-Dart, and Nancy Graves.

Herman also teaches his welding and metal forming techniques in his notable Sculpting with Welding clinics in colleges, at the International Sculpture Center conferences and out of his own studio. The Sculpting with Welding classes are also available in a video series.

Philosophically, Herman sculpts the space in and around his sculpture as much as the mass of the elements itself. A lot of his influences draw from implication of dimensional shifts: drawing and painting imply the third dimension, and sculpture a three dimensional medium implies the fourth dimension of time as the viewer moves in and around his pieces. The work and themes juxtapose diametrically opposite perspectives and deal with relationships: conscious and subconscious, Man-God, man-woman, time-space, individually and corporate society.

Besides working in the visual arts, Herman is an accomplished jazz drummer and performs with his jazz-rock-hip hop band Monsters of the Id. He resides in the Philadelphia area with his wife and son.