ARTIST KEN HAVIS (1939-1993): ALWAYS CREATE

Left: The artist Kenneth (“Ken”) Havis, who was gay and left the small town in Texas where he was born to serve in the military, study ceramics, advertising design, and glass-blowing, went on to become an influential artist and educator. Photo portrait of Havis and photo of one of his assemblage works courtesy of Webb Gallery, Waxahachie, Texas

REDISCOVERING THE LEGACY OF A TEXAS-BORN MAKER OF MAGICAL ASSEMBLAGE WORKS

Along with her husband and business partner, Bruce Lee Webb, Julie Webb has long researched, collected, and promoted art made by folk, outsider, and self-taught artists, with a special focus on those from the American South and Southwest. Through their Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, Texas, a short drive to the south of Dallas, the Webbs present and promote their eye-opening finds.

Kenneth (“Ken”) Havis, "Self-portrait," circa 1970s, mixed-media assemblage sculpture. Photo courtesy of Webb Gallery

Among the less well-known artists whose remarkable bodies of work the Webbs have studied and handled as collectors and dealers, that of Kenneth (“Ken”) Havis (1939-1993) recently caught our attention. The Webbs presented an exhibition of this artist’s mixed-media works in 2021.

Here, Julie Webb offers an introduction to Havis’s life story and art-making career.

by Julie Webb

Charles Kenneth Havis was a visionary from the start. Born in Hubbard, Texas, south of Dallas, in 1939, at the end of the Great Depression, he was one of eight children in a family of sharecroppers. From the beginning, he was different from his siblings and other children.