ken hale
Kenneth J. Hale was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Foothill Junior College, receiving an A.A. degree (1968). He went to California State Long Beach, receiving a B.A. in Printmaking (1971), where he studied with Bob Evermon, Jean Milant, and Dick Swift among others. Followed by his M.F.A. in Lithography at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (1973).
In 1973, Hale began teaching Lithography in the Department of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1979, he established and directed the Guest Artist in Printmaking Program, a collaborative-based educational program that invited established artists to create editions with the assistance of faculty and students. A partial list of invited artists includes Garo Antreasian, Karl Wirsum, Judith Linhares, Roger Herman, Melissa Miller, Robert Wilson, Luis Jimenez, Eric Avery, Jane Abrams, June Wayne, James Surls, Armando Morales, and Vernon Fisher.
Hale also founded KJH Press in 1979. A private lithography studio dedicated to printing his own work and, on occasion, collaborating with other artists such as Luis Jimenez, Robert Wilson, Cesar Martinez, Melissa Miller, John Alexander, Michael Ray Charles, and Amado Pena.
Internationally and nationally Hale has had over two dozen solo exhibitions and over 150 group exhibitions in public, educational, cultural and commercial venues such as the Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas, Texas; the McNay Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas; the Krannert Museum of Art at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana; Space Gallery in Los Angeles, California; the American Cultural Center in Madrid, Spain; the Silom Art Space in Bangkok, Thailand; the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, Texas; Flatbed Press in Austin, Texas; the William Campbell Contemporary Art Gallery in Fort Worth, Texas; and Gallery Shoal Creek in Austin, Texas.
Hale’s prints and drawings are represented in collections such as the Artist Printmaker Research Collection at the Museum of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; the Achenbach Foundation, San Francisco, California; the Atlantic Richfield Collection; the American Airlines Collection, Austin, Texas; the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas; the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts; the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth in Ft. Worth, Texas; and thirty US Embassies.
During Hale’s tenure at the University of Texas, he received numerous university research and travel awards, and in 1990, he received a Mid-America Arts Alliance National Endowment Fellowship in Painting. While at The University of Texas at Austin, Hale served as Chair of the Department of Art and Art History for nine years and as the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the College of Fine Arts for six years. In 2013 Hale retired from the university holding the title of the Marguerite Fairchild Professor Emeritus in Art.
Currently, Hale and his wife, Mona, live in Carmel Valley, California, where he continues to produce and exhibit his art.