Bio
John Steck Jr. is a visual artist and educator who is originally from Chicago, IL and now resides in Baltimore, MD. He is a maker of photographic images and ephemeral objects. Using light-sensitive emulsions, he creates photographs that both fade and form over time. This work addresses our complex relationship with time, memory, and impermanence.
Steck has exhibited across twenty states and five countries. His most recent solo exhibition, In the Shadow of the Bloom, was at the Hartman Gallery at Bradley University, in Peoria, IL. This past summer, he exhibited and presented at Yamaguchi University in Japan as part of Time and Measure, the 18th Triannual Conference for the International Society for the Study of Time. He has been included in over fifty publications, including a feature in Art21 Magazine as part of an article on the ephemeral nature of art. Steck has also attended artist residencies in Iceland, Ireland, Canada, and throughout the States. In 2016 he received a Fellowship Award from the Vermont Studio Center and in 2018 was a recipient of the IAP grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
Steck is a first-generation graduate who received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (R.I.P), and his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design. He also attended the New England School of Photography (also R.I.P.) and Wright Community College. He has been an educator for the past nine years, having taught at various institutions throughout Illinois. Steck is now a photography educator in Baltimore, Maryland.
