About
JEWELRY
Ken Fury sculpts otherworldly shapes, symbols, and organic organisms, like creatures, animals, beings, spirits, plants, and trees. Each piece of jewelry is a character with its own story that often shows growth, transformation, and rebirth. Ken's jewelry-making springs from his mixed-media paintings while also integrating elements of his Nuevomexicano and Indigenous Genízaro heritage from southern Colorado and New Mexico. Ken fashions each piece by hand, using traditional metalsmithing techniques such as hand fabrication, carving, and lost-wax casting. He specializes in one-of-a-kind and limited-edition pieces and uses precious and semi-precious stones, including turquoise, which is mined from his home area in the American Southwest. Ken makes each piece with the utmost attention to detail to ensure its durability, wearability, and originality. Ken's paintings and jewelry have been exhibited in galleries and museums and featured in publications, including Native American Art Magazine's Dec/Jan 2022 article Shiny Objects, which included Ken as one of "the best working artists today." He currently resides in Queens, New York, where he creates all of his artwork and jewelry.
ARTWORK
My paintings explore supernatural spaces inhabited by mythical creatures, transformative beings, spirits, and ancestors who take on various forms, including parts of animals, humans, figurative shapes, and elements of nature. Each character and scene offers a glimpse into their stories and worlds while still rooted in reality. My inspiration derives from my dreams, visions, life experiences, and the environments of my southern Colorado and New Mexico homelands. I am also influenced by my mixed Nuevomexicano and Indigenous Genízaro heritage which has a complex history of colonization, integration, and slavery. I use my art as an instrument of healing, resilience, and awareness as I honor, explore, and reflect on the diverse connections of my past. I focus on creating new narratives that are symbolic and imaginative and expand on the relationship between nature and humans, showing how we are all connected in the physical and invisible worlds around and within us. The symbolism of movement and change is important in my work and is seen in the shapes and forms that flow, swirl, and unite through layered textures, bold colors, and saturated effects. I use various materials, such as acrylic, oil, spray paint, airbrush, ink, and digital painting, on paper, wood panels, canvas, and leather.
BIO
Ken Fury (Kenneth Marez Jr.) works in multiple mediums, including painting, jewelry, music, dance, poetry, photography, and filmmaking. Fury lives in New York City and grew up in Pueblo, Colorado, and is of Nuevomexicano and Indigenous Genízaro descent from southern Colorado and New Mexico. His work explores the polarities of existence–creation and destruction–and the relationship between humans and nature. His art expands on multi-dimensional figurations, abstractions, and spaces derived from his dreams, subconscious, and life experiences. Love, mortality, transformation, eroticism, spirituality, and the ongoing effects of colonization permeate Fury’s body of work. Ken comments: “My art is part of one expanding environment that stimulates all the senses while also relying on intuition to create spontaneous works that attempt to pierce the core of emotion and spirit.”
Painting and Jewelry: Ken started painting at a young age, influenced by his parents, who are both artists. His paintings express the connection of emotions, movement, and energy using vibrant colors that reveal otherworldly scenes, landscapes, symbolism, and transformative characters that tie into his cultural heritage. His handmade jewelry extends his painted images into sculptural form, using traditional metalsmithing techniques. Initially a self-taught jeweler, Ken received training at Studio Jewelers Ltd. in Manhattan. His jewelry has been featured in fashion publications, sold in boutiques, and exhibited along with his paintings in art galleries and museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Dance: Ken started teaching himself how to break (breakdance) at eleven years old, and by the age of sixteen, he had won all the significant Breaking events in Colorado and competed in nearby states. After high school, Ken moved to New York City, where the hip-hop theater company Full Circle Productions had invited him to receive mentorship and training; he subsequently joined the company and performed in their off-Broadway and touring shows. He performed with the legendary street dance crew, The NYC Float Committee, whose members taught him original footwork styles from the 1970s. He also learned from the innovative dance crew Incredible Breakers. With solid fundamentals, creativity, and decades of training, he developed his signature style and moves that have won him championships in over 30 of the top breaking competitions worldwide both as a soloist and as a member of the world-renowned crew Supreme Beingz from Queens. He has judged and taught masterclasses at many of the most influential dance events, and he has been featured in commercials, independent films, and the Netflix series The Get Down. Ken shares his multidisciplinary knowledge through his Breaking Institute programs. He has taught at schools and universities, including NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in the Experimental Theater Wing and the Seoul Institute of the Arts, and he has traveled to Zimbabwe and Indonesia as a Cultural Ambassador with the U.S. Department of State's Next Level and American Voices programs.
Music: In 2010, inspired to combine his poetry, his paintings themes and images, and dance, Ken began experimenting with electronic instruments, including drum machines, synthesizers, theremin, as well as bass and guitar. He composed and performed all of the music on the albums Flowers Fall Asleep (2012), Moonlight Bloom (2013), The Cry of Nature's Birth (2016), and Rain over Clouds (2020), all released on his Inerus Music label. Ken Fury's atmospheric soundscapes explore surreal worlds linked to the past and future that weave in and out of life on earth using textured electronics and heavy drums. His song lyrics combine romantic, sci-fi, and futuristic themes. He's performed at music venues in New York City and on radio stations, including WFMU. The short films he directs present his music's theatrical nature in visual form. These films have been selected for screening and received awards at film festivals, including the Native Spirit Film Festival, Four Corners Film Festival, American Indian Film Festival, and Portland Film Festival. In 2022, Ken was nominated for Best Rock Video at the Native American Music Awards.