Eric Martin is an Oakland-based visual artist. Grounded in the natural environment and human experience of nature’s processes, his work is a record and a reminder of our physicality in an era of widespread digital imaging and quantitative reduction. The result is an understanding of nature and the natural landscape as both a thing unto itself and as a theatre in which human activity and effects play out.
Eric studied engineering and technology policy at MIT and sculpture at the California College of the Arts. He is a recipient of the San Francisco Foundation’s Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship in the Fine Arts and was artist-in-residence at Joshua Tree National Park in 2010. His work has been exhibited at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Little Paper Planes (Oakland, CA), and Factory Outlet (Mokelumne Hill, CA).
In 2016, Eric had his first solo exhibition with Gallery 2301 in Oakland, where he exhibited work based on his direct observation of the Gap Fire, a wildfire which burned 34,000 acres of the Klamath National Forest in September of the same year.