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Shores, Ken
| Last Name: | Shores |
|---|---|
| First Name: | Ken |
| Dates: |
1928 (Date of Birth)
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| Biography/History: | Ken Shores was born in 1928 in Lebanon, Oregon and now lives and works in Portland, Oregon. As a youth he was the class artist and imagined he would grow up to be a painter and was introduced to clay by a high school art teacher. After serving with the US Army, Shores finished his BS at the University of Oregon in 1955 and his MFA at the University of Oregon in 1957. After graduation he served as Artist-in-Residence at the Oregon Ceramic Studio (now known as Museum of Contemporary Craft) in Portland, OR from 1957 to 1964 and became the first paid director of the Oregon Ceramic Studio from 1965 to 1968. In 1968, he left the Oregon Ceramic Studio to join the faculty at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR where he remained until 1995. In 1980 he was elected as a Lifetime Trustee Emeritus to the National Board of American Crafts Council, and in 2007 he was included in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. He went through an abrupt style change in 1966 when he began creating 3D, abstract stoneware sculptures with bright acrylic paints, and another abrupt style change in 1968 when he began to focus on his highly successful objects of feathers and clay (although this may have begun earlier in 1957 with his vessels with feather-like clay appendages), the style which he is known for today. In much of his work his lifelong love of anthropology and archaeology can easily be seen as an influence. |
| Related Objects: |
4234.30 (Sculpture, Fetish #80, circa 1981)
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