Mark Bradford

Mark Bradford (born 1961 Los Angeles, California) is an American artist living and working in Los Angeles. When Bradford graduated high school, he obtained his hairdresser's license and went to work at his mother's salon. Bradford began his studies at the California Institute of the Arts in 1991 at the age of 30 where he earned a BFA in 1995 and an MFA in 1997.

Bradford transforms materials scavenged from the street into wall-size collages and installations that respond to the impromptu networks—underground economies, migrant communities, or popular appropriation of abandoned public space—that emerge within a city.

Mark Bradford has received many awards, including the Bucksbaum Award (2006); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2003); and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2002). He has been included in major exhibitions at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2006); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2003); REDCAT, Los Angeles (2004); and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2001). He has participated in the twenty-seventh Bienal de São Paulo (2006); the Whitney Biennial (2006); and "inSite: Art Practices in the Public Domain," San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico (2005). Bradford lives and works in Los Angeles.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/arts/design/24bradford.html?_r=0, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-ca-cam-mark-bradford-scorched-earth-hammer-20150621-column.html, http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mark-bradford)