Thomas Patrick Huston
Thomas Patrick Huston is a writer, published photographer, musician, and award-winning filmmaker. He is known for a creative, risk taking, and thought-provoking approach to all of his work. Even though his first documentary was on a controversial subject (the N word) and presented in an unconventional way, he managed to beat thirty other documentaries, some by established filmmakers, in a contest sponsored by The Documentary Channel. Using the same unconventional style, and not shying away from any controversy, Huston is currently working on a documentary that involves the subject of war.
Early life
Huston graduated from James Whitcomb Riley High School in his native town of South Bend, Indiana. He moved to Lafayette, Indiana, in 1992 and spent nine years collecting degrees (BA in English Education, a BA in Creative Writing, and a Masters in English) at Purdue University and three years teaching high school at Jefferson High School. Lafayette's newspaper Journal and Courier ran three articles on Huston's Advanced Placement Senior English course, including an editorial praising his teaching style.
Huston left secondary teaching in 1999 after Purdue University offered a teaching stipend. He taught Composition 101 and 102 at Purdue University while obtaining his Masters degree. In 2000 he moved to Chicago and was an editor for Houghton-Mifflin for three years before pursuing art full-time.
Photography
Thomas Patrick Huston's photography has been published in The Potomac Review and After Hours.
He favors black and white photography over color and usually has a title included with every photograph. He is currently looking to publish a collection of some his work.
Film
In 2007 Huston's documentary A Grassroots Analysis of the N Word was announced as the grand prize winning documentary in a contest sponsored by The Documentary Channel and VMIX. A Grassroots Analysis of the N Word had a world premiere on June 23, 2007, on The Documentary Channel during the channel's prime time hours.
The website Internet Video Magazine listed A Grassroots Analysis of the N Word on their list of "Best Films and Videos of the Week" and said the film was "a very interesting documentary." The website also listed the video in their section titled "Political and Controversial Videos and Websites: A guide to websites who want to change the world through video and multimedia."
On July 11, 2007, the Oak Park, Illinois newspaper Oak Leaves published an article on Huston and his winning documentary, "A Grassroots Analysis of the N Word." The Title of the article was Film gets takes on controversial word.
Thomas Patrick Huston is currently working on his next documentary.
Music
In 2003 Huston and three others from Houghton-Mifflin started a band called Heather. Huston started out writing lyrics and other song craft IDeaS, but was eager to Contribute musically, and so he bought a keyboard and self-taught himself how to play. The band only played live once during a battle of the bands concert.
Heather stayed together for a little over a year. Huston decided not to give up music entirely and began a solo project called Wind, Trees and BIrds and another project with a friend called Magdalene. Huston began experimenting with Pro Tools and Garageband by creating a unique collage of sounds by mixing talk from Polish radio, distortion, drum beats, and keyboards, and his goal in each instrumental is usually to have the soundscape represent the title of each song. The two songs heard in A Grassroots Analysis of the N Word are written and performed by Huston. Wind, Trees, and BIrds, Magdalene, and Heather's music can be heard on Huston's TagWorld music page.
Writing
Huston has written a novella, a play, two shorts stories, and over one-hundred poems. He is currently looking into getting some of his work published and/or performed.
External links
- [thomashuston@mac.com]