Art Story Arc and Bio
At seven, I overheard a lady call my mom an artist. I corrected her, “I’m the artist; my mom’s the photographer.”
Obliged to live up to that sassy claim, I attended RISD and majored in Graphic Design (also known as Visual Communication).
I wouldn’t call Graphic Design the “art” I was adamant about at seven. Still, it was a better catch-all for someone with too many other interests, such as music, technology, and collecting things for no apparent purpose.
Photo of “artist” by her mother, Anne Huggins, 1966
In my junior year, 1979, I experimented with a mainframe computer at Dartmouth to digitize shell forms that could be rotated in 3D. This led to more digitizing projects, and I spent a summer in Germany digitizing typefaces for optical printers.
But I did not end up in Germany.
Unternehmens Beratung Rubow Weber, with Herman Zapf – Hamburg Germany 1980, 1985
After RISD, I taught Graphic Design for two years at the Portland School of Art (PSA), now Maine College of Art (MeCA). As PSA transitioned to MeCA, I required a master’s degree to continue teaching.
I joined three other students at Stanford University as the charter cohort in a master’s program called Digital Typography. However, I did not return to Maine to teach.
Instead, I designed a 1100-character digital font of Egyptian Hieroglyphs for a master’s thesis and was sucked down the rabbit hole of what became Fonts and Silicon Valley.
Photo by a MacWorld rando – 1984
I stayed in California for ten years, working on creative projects in corporate environments, including Adobe and Apple, and integrating artistic values and views into emerging technology.
Packaging and logo for a digital painting program, Painter by Fractal Design – produced by our Graphic Design company RuckerHuggins. 1990
At Adobe, I designed the first digital, scalable font of music notation, Sonata.
Sonata research phase. 1984
Sonata Packaging: A pre-cloud solution involving plastic cases, ownership, and the physical possession of software. 1985
At Apple, I designed the interface for their online service, eWorld – using a village as the metaphor.
Flyer for eWorld and the Information Highway–hop on to the Internet–and a few more mixed metaphors. 1990s
If I had remained in Silicon Valley for another decade, I might have cashed out like my peers. Instead, I chose pro-bono graphical work for NGOs like USAID and Oxfam. This took me to India, Malaysia, South America, and Africa with a first-generation digital camera and a laptop.
Lodwar, Kenya – 2002
When the music stopped, I landed in New England at my grandparents’ 300-year-old house, where I spent another decade refining the art of patience with clients and building websites.
Sorting our oysters
That was when raising oysters and creating something that lasted beyond the current operating system became far more interesting than technology.
Messing about on the oyster farm dock.
Thanks to a series of excellent teachers at Sanctuary Arts, I channeled my years of computer art skills into Oil Painting. My collection habit now has an apparent purpose, providing me with an endless supply of oyster shells and horseshoe crabs as models.
Bellamy River Oysters C.V. Edna, C.V. Gerda, C.V. Belle, C.V. Daisy – Oil on panel 5″ x 7″ – 2023
Something magical happens when you start to paint. The world dishes up subjects and stunning light every moment, seducing you to explore more. What used to be a predictable experience at the Boston Aquarium —roaming down the spiral ramp, waiting for the turtle, and fending off baby carriages —instead became an infinite sequence of portraits. How do these creatures spend their day? What is it like living underwater? How would I capture that?
Thought Police – 2024
Prescience – 2023
Limulus polyphemus – 2021
I’ve chosen painterly realism as my path to understanding how to represent ocean critters’ form and learning how to capture the environment they inhabit.
And, I am elated at last not to have made a liar of my 7-year-old self.
cleohuggins@gmail.com (best way to reach me)
Printable Artist Statement – most of the same stuff as above, but written in the 3rd person, which seems to be a requirement for Artist Statements.
Resume
EDUCATION
Stanford University 1983-1988
Department of Computer Science
MS Digital Typography
Thesis: Egyptian Hieroglyphs for Modern Printing Devices.
Rhode Island School of Design 1977-1981
BA Graphic Design
Thesis: Apple II 3-D animation
WORK EXPERIENCE
Cleos.Studio – Dover, NH
Owner
Fine Art – Oil Paintings
Little Bay WebWorks – Dover, NH
Co-founder, 2012 – ongoing
Webapp design – Custom, WordPress
CipherSpace LLC – USA
Director of Design – remote, 2005 – 2021
International IT Services company.
Marketing materials, website/webapp,
educational materials, technology review
Gritty – Dover, NH
Co-founder – 1995 – 2005
Foundation for multi-media advocacy for Non-Governmental Organizations
Infographics, Web, Illustration
System Simulation Ltd. – London, UK
Interface Design Consultant – 1995
UX/UI of a comprehensive
music database: RockNRom
Apple Computer – Cupertino, CA
Human Interface Design Manager – 1992 – 1994
UX/UI – Design and production of eWorld,
Apple’s Online Service
Electronic Media Group Designer – 1991-1992
Graphic design, and HyperCard implementation of develop, Apple’s technical journal
Rucker Huggins – Redwood City, CA
Co-founder, Principal Designer – 1990 -1994
Interface, book, package, magazine design.
Clients included Apple, NeXT, General Magic Inc., Sun Microsystems, Lego & Duplo
NeXT Computer – Redwood City, CA
Marketing & Communications Design – 1989-1990
Production of Marketing material using
the NeXT Computer
Institut Français D’Archéologie Orientale – Cairo, Egypt
PostScript Type Consultant – 1990
Supervised the conversion of a 7000
character Hieroglyphic metal font to a
PostScript outline font
Adobe Systems Incorporated – San Jose, CA
Member of Typographic Staff – 1984 -1989
PostScript font production; Original font design: Sonata, a font of Music Notation; Non-Latin font production: Hebrew, Arabic; Graphic design: 1985 Typographic calendar, Adobe Originals promotional booklets
Veterans Administration Medical Center
– Palo Alto, CA
UX/UI Design – 1985-1987
Development of the Macintosh interface for the Computer-Aided Visual Communication Severely Impaired Aphasics project
Unternamensberatung Rubow Weber (URW) – Hamburg, Germany
Typeface Production – 1980, 1983
Production of digital type using proprietary cubic spline fitting software, Ikarus
Maine College of Art – Portland, ME
Instructor of Graphic Design – 1981-1983
College-level design – Freshman basic design and color, Sophomore graphic design electives, Junior and Senior level graphic design. Formerly Portland School of Art.
RECOGNITION
Citation for Typographic Excellence, New York Type Director’s Club – 31 & 36
CERTIFICATIONS
Data Visualization with Tableau Specialization – Coursera – 2021
3D Design with Blender – Berklee Online – 2014
Intro to Programming with Python – Udacity – 2012