Gardiner C. Funo O'Kain maintains a studio practice in Chicago, Illinois. She is a faculty member of the Art Department at New Trier Township High School; she teaches Japanese Cinema and Moving Image Arts at Columbia College and Animation to teenagers at The Art Institute of Chicago. Prior to earning a BFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Arts and Art Education at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Funo O'Kain worked in the feature film and television industry in San Francisco for several years. She is a Sansei Japanese-American whose work is informed by language, pedagogy, the ethics and aesthetics of failure, and the Japanese diaspora.
