biography

Kong Ho utilizes his bicultural background as a teaching artist and muralist professionally trained in both Chinese and Western visual art to teach and practice art. Currently, Ho is a full-time teaching artist and muralist based in Iowa. He earned a M.F.A. in painting and drawing at Texas Tech University in 1994. Since then, he taught as art professor and practicing artist at several universities, including North Iowa Area Community College, USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry, University of Southern California and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University of Brunei Darussalam, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, Hong Kong Baptist University, and University of Hong Kong. Ho has received several fellowships, including Visiting Research Fellowship; Fulbright U.S. Scholarship, taught mural painting at the National Academy of Art in Sofia, Bulgaria, for 5 months; VSA Arts Teaching Artist Fellowship; Hong Kong Baptist University Fellowship; Sasakawa Fellowship; International VSA arts Festival Fellowship; and Fellowship for Artistic Development. Always looking for new opportunities to inform the public of the educational and cultural value of community murals, he founded the Hong Kong Mural Society in 1997. After that, he has organized and painted numerous school and community murals in the past 23 years.

In addition to his mural art, his representational-imaginative paintings have been exhibited in 16 solo exhibitions and more than 120 international and national exhibitions including United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Japan, China, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Hong Kong. His art work has been exhibited in venues such as the United Nations Headquarters, Chelsea Art Museum and American Council for the Arts Exhibition Space in New York City; World Bank Art Gallery and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC; the US Ambassadors' Residences in Macedonia; Clymer Museum and Gallery in Washington; Amarillo Museum of Art and Brownsville Museum of Fine Art in Texas; Fine Arts Museums in New Mexico; Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg; San Diego Museum of Art and Los Angeles Center for Digital Art in California; Sunny Art Center in London; Joseph D. Carrier Art Gallery in Canada; Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin; Atelier Montez in Rome; National Academy of Art and New Bulgarian University in Bulgaria; Museum of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts and Peking Museum of Art in China, Osaka Prefecture University in Japan, National Institute of Education Art Gallery in Singapore, Poh-Chang Academy of Arts in Thailand, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Heritage Museum and Hong Kong Museum of Art in Hong Kong. Moreover, Ho has participated in several residency programs, including Villa Barr Residency in Michigan, Kingsbrae International Residence for the Arts in Canada, Vermont Studio Center in Vermont, Bethany Arts Community in New York, Soaring Gardens in Pennsylvania, I-Park in Connecticut and British Council in Hong Kong.

His research in community murals and transcendental paintings led to the publishing of his two books, Larger Than Life: Mural Dreamscapes and A Stroke in Time: An Artist's Memoir of Kong Ho in 2016. Moreover, his research papers have been presented in 38 conferences and published in 10 peer-reviewed journals and 12 conference proceedings, such as Teaching Artist Journal, The International Journal of the Arts in Society, History Research, Journal of Art and Design, The Asian Conference on Arts and Humanities Official Conference Proceedings, Arts Education Conference Proceedings, and The Visual and Performing Arts: An International Anthology. Moreover, his work has been reviewed in Studio Visit, Vol. 19, 2012; Direct Art, Vol. 18, 2011; New Art International, Vol. 14, 2010; United States Embassy Skopje – ART in Embassies Program, 2006; Pennsylvania Wilds: Images from the Allegheny National Forest, 2006; Asian Art News, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2004 and The New Art Examiner, 21 No. 5, 1994 and Art in America, Feb. 1994.