Eric Hongisto

Instagram: @erichongisto

Website: http://www.erichongisto.net

Bio: "Eric Hongisto lives and works in the SF Bay Area. He is Professor of Fine Arts and Chair of the Department of Art + Architecture at the University of San Francisco. He received his MFA in Painting/Printmaking from the Yale University School of Art, 1999, and his BFA in Painting from the Maine College of Art, 1997. Awards include a Graves Award in the Humanities, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Guggenheim Fellowship in Installation and a New York Foundation of the Arts, Painting Fellowship. He has participated in numerous Residency programs, such as the Fine Arts Work Center, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Dieu Donne Papermill, Socrates Sculpture Park, and the Lower Eastside Printshop. Exhibitions of his work have been shown at the deCordova Museum, Museum of the Rockies, Queens Museum, Bates Museum of Art, Drawing Center, and the Boston Center of the Arts."

Statement: " Color theory and social science inspired art research are the backbone of my studio analog practice. Current investigations continue with large scale watercolor experiments on canvas. These wall based works have compositions and shapes that are derived from backyard skateboarding pools, ultimately finding historical connections back to Finnish Architect, Alvar Aalto’s original kidney shaped pool at Villa Mairea. Subsequent connections from my skateboarding hobby have brought this project closer to home, with witnessing climate change fueled wildfires burning down suburban homes, and leaving the concrete swimming pools as memorials to our changing landscape. Additional field research into the flora and fauna of California forests, and publishing forays with digital photography, have widened my attempts to bear witness to the accelerating climate crisis with projects to showcase forest, water and fire ecologies. "