Vita: |
To briefly update, in an
attempt to over compensate for 21 years of overwork at low pay, I chose to
follow my bliss and attend art school upon retirement. Substantiating my low
class standing all those years ago, I elected to pursue sculpture, which is what
most people bump into when they step back to look at a painting. To support my
sculpture habit, and in further evidence that that firstie logic class had some
flaws, I signed on to teach sculpture after graduating from art school. Soldier
to sculptor, to teacher - chasing the big bucks, obviously.
The art school where I teach,
the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is affiliated with Tufts U. and I
am engaged in bringing the sculpture area and the school into the 21st century
by introducing computer-aided design and fabrication into the curriculum. This
is done in collaboration with the architecture dept. at MIT and, thus, I get the
chance to engage and teach with some of the brightest folks on the block and
attempt to contaminate the standard art-student mind-set with such alien
concepts as structure, preplanning and discipline. It does require me to stay
reasonable up to date with the emerging technologies - not my strong suit, but I
am the only thing that even resembles an "engineer" on the faculty. I also
teach a "lightweight construction" and traditional (welding, carving, etc.)
fabrication techniques. Teaching is great and there are weeks when I would do
it for nothing, then there are weeks when I question my sanity.
My own work has evolved, and is
best seen on
www.kenhruby.com for those of you
interested in some light reading.
Along with my first wife,
Billie, I live on an island, Cape Ann, north of Boston in the fishing town of
Gloucester where the tale of the "Perfect Storm" originated and was filmed. Our
three children, whom some of you will remember as Melissa, Amanda and KC, all
now live within the immediate area and are excelling in their respective areas
of culinary arts, nutrition counseling and fashion design/screen printing,
among other things, with the cumulative sum of six off-spring in the gene
pool. Grand-parenting is a great way to maintain a sense of perspective.
Beyond the isolation that comes
with being a studio artist, geography has intensified that sense and, save a few
local classmates who annually gather to mourn at the army/navy game, I have
little contact with the class or company mates. I hope to see you all at the
45th at USMA in good health and good spirits.
Ken
and daughter Amanda |
