Teaching Artist Profile

Kenneth Marez Jr. (Ken Fury) is an artist working in multiple mediums, including painting, jewelry, music, dance, poetry, photography, and filmmaking. He is from Pueblo, Colorado, descending from Indigenous(Genízaro) and Nuevomexicano roots from southern Colorado and New Mexico. His artistic vision explores nature’s duality – creation and destruction – and expands on multi-dimensional figurations, abstractions, and spaces derived from his dreams, subconscious, and life experiences. Love, mortality, transformation, eroticism, spirituality, and colonialism are some subjects that permeate Fury’s body of work. “My art is part of one expanding environment that focuses on stimulating all the senses. While also relying on intuition to create spontaneous works that attempt to pierce the core of emotion and spirit.”   Ken started painting at a young age, influenced by both his parents, who are artists. His paintings express emotions, movement, and energy using vibrant colors that take the form of otherworldly scenes, landscapes, and inter-dimensional characters that tie into his Indigenous roots. His sculptures take the form of jewelry, which is handmade using traditional metalsmithing techniques. Ken Fury started making jewelry in 2006; he is self-taught and graduated from Studio Jewelers Ltd. in Manhattan. His jewelry and artwork have been exhibited and sold in art galleries, boutiques, and museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. ​His approach encompasses all his art forms, including dance. Ken started teaching himself how to dance at the age of eleven. After high school, he moved to New York City with an invitation to study and join the hip-hop theater company Full Circle Productions. While performing in theater, he simultaneously danced on the streets of New York City with the legendary NYC Float Committee, who passed down teachings to him along with learning from Incredible Breakers. Ken‘s signature style has won him over 30 of the top Breaking competitions worldwide and more with his crew Supreme Beingz. He has been invited to judge and teach master classes at many of the most significant dance events and has performed at Central Park Summer Stage, Madison Square Garden, Kennedy Center, and The Smithsonian in Washington DC. He has choreographed and performed in films and commercials for Starburst, Toshiba, I love New York, Blender’s Pride, K-Swiss, The Netflix series The Get Down, and more. In addition, Ken shares his multidisciplinary knowledge through his Breaking Insititute programs. He has taught at schools and universities, including New York University’s TISCH School of the Arts and the Seoul Institute of the Arts. He has worked with the U.S. Department of State’s cultural ambassador programs Next Level, where he traveled to Zimbabwe, Africa, and American Voice’s where he taught at The Jakarta Institute of the Arts in Indonesia.​​Ken began producing music in 2010 with the inspiration to merge his poetry and the world of his paintings to create a sonic space. Without prior musical training, he taught himself to play multiple instruments, including drum machines, synthesizers, theremin, and guitar. He wrote and released Flowers Fall Asleep (2012). Followed by Moonlight Bloom (2013), The Cry of Nature’s Birth (2016), and Rain over Clouds (2020). His music has elements of krautrock, post-punk, darkwave, hip hop, and industrial that influence his sound. He has performed at many of NYC’s premier music venues, such as the legendary Pyramid Club, Bowery Electric, Alphaville, WFMU radio station, and more. Ken Fury directs the short films that accompany his songs. They have screened and received awards at film festivals, including the Portland Film Festival, Native Spirit Festival, Four Corners Film Festival, and the American Indian Film Festival. ​Ken Fury currently lives in New York City.