Ken Huston :: Statement

As a child, I remember listening to someone on the radio predicting technological events coming in the near future. One prediction was that everyone would be traveling in helicopters instead of cars. My reaction to the idea was that it made no sense and would result in a lot of collisions. This is my first recollection of applying critical thinking in response to an idea. And, in retrospect, I think this may have been my intellectual introduction to art. 

For me, art is a process of inquiry. It is a method of asking questions and attempting to gain understanding. Most people learn about art in childhood through classes or museum visits. My introduction to it came much later through a series of events that steered me toward art as a career.

Though twenty-five years were spent in fine art photography and education at the college level, I was leaning toward sculpture as far back as graduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago. While walking along Lake Michigan, I found buried in the sand a smooth, water-worn firebrick embossed with the words “TIFFANY GLAZED BRICK.” The contradiction between the brute physicality of a brick and the precious quality associated with the word Tiffany fascinated me. It was an epiphany that initiated my first sculptural act. After studying the brick periodically over several years, I created my first sculptural object by placing the brick in a walnut box cushioned with a velvet lining. Over the years, my dissatisfaction with the illusion of space versus real space increased. I gradually began the transition from photography to sculpture. But it wasn’t until I left teaching in 2000 that all of my energy was devoted to sculpture.

In the last few years, my sculpture’s evolution has progressed rapidly. There seems to be a recurring direction in my work that concerns questions related to philosophy, especially in the branches of ontology and epistemology. If it were necessary to apply a label, perhaps it lies at the intersection of minimalism and conceptualism. The objects have minimalist physical qualities manifested in a variety of materials. What I find exciting is that the idea dictates the material in a constant confrontation with the unknown. I believe the thought process is a continuous movement, and art created is a manifestation of that movement. Each piece relates to its predecessors. I see the evolution of my work as fragments moving along a straight line.