Kenneth A. Huff is an interdisciplinary visual artist working in a variety of traditional and new media. Through intricately-detailed abstractions, he explores evolving patterns and forms in nature. His body of organically-inspired work spans twenty-five years and includes prints, sculptures, time-based projects and photographs. Ken’s works have been included in over 350 public showings in Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States.
One-person showings have included exhibitions at the Telfair Museum of Art, the Brevard Museum of Art and Science, the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Savannah College of Art and Design and the Atlanta City Gallery at the Chastain Art Center. The Ars Electronica Center exhibited a collection of Ken’s high-resolution still images and a number of site-specific, time-based works, 2009–2011.
Recognizing the unique way he used their software, Alias Systems (now Autodesk) named Ken a “Maya Master” in 2002. Ken has received in-kind support and technology grants from Alias Systems, mental images, the General Motors Design Center, the Savannah College of Art and Design School of Film and Digital Media and Apple Computer. While living in Florida, he received a 2006 Individual Artist Grant from the Arts Council of Hillsborough County and a 2007 State of Florida Artist Enhancement Grant.
Ken’s work has been included in ten ACM SIGGRAPH* Art Galleries, with a total of twenty-seven works shown. The most recent of these was the 2008 Slow Art exhibition in Los Angeles.
Ken has lectured frequently about his work and creative practice. In 2005, he was a Malloy Visiting Fellow at Juniata College. He has presented his work at the School of Visual Arts, numerous SIGGRAPH conferences, the Digital Arts and Sciences Program at the University of Florida, the School of Architecture at New Jersey Institute of Technology, Boston University, the General Motors Design Center and Lucasfilm Animation Singapore, among many others. Ken taught as a Professor of Visual Effects in the School of Film and Digital Media at Savannah College of Art and Design, 2007–2011. He worked and taught as a Technical Trainer and Training Supervisor at Lucasfilm/Industrial Light & Magic Singapore, 2011–2019.
Books containing Ken’s work include Art of the Digital Age by Bruce Wands (Thames and Hudson), Painting the Digital River by James Faure Walker (Prentice Hall) and CGI: The Art of the 3D Computer-Generated Image by Peter Weishar (Abrams). Aesthetic Computing, edited by Dr. Paul Fishwick (MIT Press), includes cover artwork created by Ken and a chapter on his Encoding with Prime Factors series.
His work can be viewed here, on this site, and at www.kennethahuff.com.
*Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics
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Of recent work: Strange Attractions
Strange Attractions is an ongoing body of work, spanning thirty years, utilizing an original set of strange attractor formulas. Based to the mathematics of chaos theory, I am using chaotic strange attractors to explore natural systems, patterns, and rhythms. Images of these evolving chaotic systems are layered, one moment over next, like waves washing over sand, eventually replacing the accumulation of those that came before. With this work, I make chaos a medium, a material, and a mark-making instrument.
Strange Attractions debuted at the Singapore Night Festival 2019 in the form of live performances and an animation. The project is under active development.
Of recent work: Photography and poetry
Photography always has been an important part of Ken’s creative practice, an aspect that has evolved through a number of stages. For many years, subjects were from the natural world, mostly plants and animals. More recently, he has been using photography to explore and document his travels and day-to-day experiences.
Ken started sharing his photography more widely in early 2016. On an April morning bus ride in San Francisco, Ken was bitten by a haiku bug:
April 2016, Chinatown, San Francisco.
early morning light
gently nodding all their heads
hello there, kitties
Less than a year later, one of his photo haiku was featured on NHK’s Haiku Masters program from Japan:
October 2016, approaching Gampa La Pass, near Yamdrotso Lake (ཡར་འབྲོག་གཡུ་མཚོ་), on the road to Gyantse (རྒྱལ་རྩེ), Tibet (བོད་).
built impermanence
evidence left behind
this way we were here
“Master” might be overdoing it, but he certainly is having fun with these tiny poems, especially when combined with photographs.
Some monthly collections of poetry and photos appear on Medium. Daily photos, often with poems, make their way onto Ken’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr feeds. The Poetry category of Ken’s blog includes poems published above and more.
We are most truly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of a child at play.
— Heroclitus
Indeed.
— Ken