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He became a Christian and started learning to play the drums at age 10. Besides Jr. High Band and High School Orchestra, he was in Rock and Roll bands throughout his teens. He didn't see any conflict between Christianity and Rock n Roll, but many in the church did. He made most of his spending money with "The Myrchants of Tyme" in his late teens. However, success and stardom eluded him, and, after stints at a gas station, a factory, at carpet, floor, and ceiling installation, and at running a retail paint store, he got a job with Southern Bell, "until he could find a real job." He also married his High School sweetheart, Cecilia Weir, finished a year of college, and joined the Army Reserves, all before he was 21. Starting pay with the Bell System wasn't much, but it was steady, and he ended up working for them for almost 31 years. His Army Reserve was a Combat Engineer Unit and he learned how to operate a dump truck, a tractor trailer, a bulldozer, a front end loader, an earth mover, and a road grader. In the Bell System he did underground, buried, and aerial splicing, underground, buried and aerial line work, underground, buried, and aerial repair, home and small business installation, and Design Engineering, finishing up as the Senior Design Engineer for Castle Rock, Colorado. Along the way he operated vans, pumps, backhoes, digger derricks, wench trucks, reel trucks, rodder trucks, jack hammers, tampers, and shovels. (Yes, the hand variety.) He worked in Miami, Memphis, and Denver. The companies were AT&T, Southern Bell, South Central Bell, Mountain Bell, USWest, and Qwest. In the meantime, he started painting in oils at age 20, mostly because he missed the creative outlet being in a band used to afford him. He also started designing and building things out of wood, from chess boards and pieces, to inlaid jewelry boxes, to dining room sets. When Kenny was age 23 he and Cecilia had a son, Eric, and at 25 they had another son, Adam. They moved to Memphis after Eric was born because they couldn't afford a house anywhere in Miami. They moved back to Miami, (actually, Opa Locka) shortly before Adam was born. (It was in Memphis that he sold his first oil paintings, enamel paintings, and some twisted copper sculptures.) They opened a store in Opa Locka, "Your Friendly Neighborhood Artist", a few years later, but the store wasn't doing well and the threats of a big layoff subsided, so they gave it up. Cecilia began working at the Elementary School where the boys went. They took a vacation to Colorado when the boys were 11 and 9 years old and immediately put in for a transfer! They moved that November 1983, just in time for the Thanksgiving Blizzard, 36 glorious inches of powder. They bought a house 6 months later and have lived there ever since. The boys are men now, both Aerospace Engineers out of CU, with jobs and wives and homes of their own. He said, "What about the running? The novel?
The songs?" OK, fine. He ran the Miami Marathon a couple of
times. He wrote some songs that nobody sings and a novel that nobody
would publish. Big Deal. He said, "How about the technical
mountain climbing? The snow caves? The Scuba Diving? The water skiing?
The snow skiing? The Mile Swim? I said "No, people will think
you're just making this stuff up." Ken had started photography in about 1980. He first built a window frame for one of his photographs around 1986. He redesigned it several times to get a sturdy, quality product that he could reproduce accurately. He refuses to use press board or power staples. The frames consist of rails, a sill, and molding. The rails, top and sides, solid pine cut from 2X6's, give the frames their strength and the depth needed to both make the finished product look like a real window and allow the frame to hang flush to the wall. They are counter-sunk and glued and screwed with 3" screws for strength and durability. The screw holes are filled with dowel rods. The sill is predrilled, but not counter-sunk, and also glued and screwed. The molding is glued. Since this is real wood, and the density of wood changes with the grain and resin content, some areas take the stain better than others. Also, most sills have knots, but some don't. The exception to this is, if you order Colonial White, Ken uses Composite Molding. He says you're not going to see the grain anyway, it lasts just as long, and it gives a smoother finish to the paint. These are photographs, not digital, and are mounted on core board. Ken uses 1/16th inch plexiglass to enhance the illusion of these being real windows, to protect the photographs, to keep the weight down, and to avoid breakage, especially during shipping. He tried several designs to achieve the look of the window panes. He settled on screen tac, which he dados so they cross but remain flush with the glass and each other. However, some people see the dividers as a distraction. Plus, even though he tries to compose the pictures so nothing important is hidden, sometimes that happens anyway. For instance, in "Gore Pass With Moon", the moon is covered by the vertical divider. So, not only can you order any frame with any photograph, you can order any frame with or without the cross members. If you're ordering two or more windows, you can specify any commercially available stain or color of paint. Since he's also the shipping department,
and he can be such an annoying perfectionist, he builds a 'box within
a box' to ship these. So, your box will have a layer of 1/8th inch
masonite inside the cardboard box. And it'll say "Fragile"
and "Glass", even though these windows are anything but
fragile and the glass is plexiglass. I began experimenting with Oil-Based Enamel Paint over 30 years ago after I spoke with an artist who was putting enamel on Styrofoam. I began working with enamel on masonite. There are a lot of inherent limitations when using enamel paint. The different colors have different specific gravities, so, as they dry, the lighter colors rose to the top and the heavier colors sunk. The painting I ended up with only slightly resembled the painting as I had painted it. Still, they were interesting and colorful, and I sold several. At some point it occurred to me that if I pressed my freshly completed painting onto glass, it would hold its’ shape. I experimented with that, made several enamel on glass paintings, and then let them sit for 30 years. I didn’t know if they would crack, fade, or peal. After 30 years of being mounted on a wall where they receive some direct sunlight every day they are still as vibrant as the day I painted them. So, I began painting in this medium again in 2002. Because of weight and flexibility, I now use Acrylic instead of Glass. As far as I know, I am the only person who paints Enamel on Acrylic. TECNIQUE: I also cut out forms, paint them, and then
press them directly to the glass, so that I can have identical foregrounds
with varied backgrounds. For more
control and detail I use the reverse painting technique that is used by those
who do oil on glass paintings. I can also mask areas of the glass with tape. |
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Kenneth
Pederson was born at 3:33AM on Feb. 11, 1949 in Miami Shores Hospital,
the youngest of three boys. He remembers the birth very well, but
nothing else for at least a year or so. He apologizes for the lapse,
but says we could skip ahead for nine years anyway. Kenny made $.50
an hour for his first job at age 9, unpacking boxes of the metal
parts that make the shelves for a Drug Store. Those jobs only came
a couple of times a year, but by the time he was 19, he could do
a complete Drug Store installation himself (including the carpet)
or supervise a crew of union laborers and electricians.