Cindy Tower is an artist whose practice slips between painting, performance and social engagement. After receiving a BFA from Cornell University, she hitchhiked to New York and became an early presence in the Williamsburg art scene of the 1980s. She later earned her MFA at the University of California, San Diego, the birthplace of performance and conceptual art, studying directly under Allen Kaprow and being a teaching assistant for Eleanor Antin—an experience that shaped her anti-aesthetic, process-driven approach.

Tower has consistently worked with found and repurposed materials in her sculptures and installations. Her installations even absorbed the people she has come across in the making. Her created environments consistently pulled viewers into the work as participants.

In 2000, she deliberately shifted to painting but carried her performative methods with her. She often painted in precarious sites—abandoned factories, condemned structures, and neglected city lots with her “Bodyguard”, Edgar Carter, Homeless friend, “River Steve” and adopted wild dog, Buster—where the process itself became inseparable from the finished work. These paintings absorb their environments: weather, debris, and the unpredictability of chance encounters all leave their mark. The art-making process was filmed and the act of painting itself became collaborative—engaging local community members.

More recently, her practice has leaned toward political protest, community organizing, and socially charged happenings. Tower has collaborated with residents, activists, and grassroots groups staging interventions and spontaneous events that confront questions of labor, displacement and inequality. These works use art as a tool for resistance and dialogue, extending her long-standing interest in collapsing the distance between studio practice and lived experience.

Tower’s work has been seen nationally in solo exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC), Bruno David Gallery (St. Louis), Crisp Museum (MO), and Trans Hudson Gallery (NYC), among others. She has taught at the New York Studio School and Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and has been a visiting artist at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Her practice continues to explore themes of decay, obsolescence, and transformation through painting as performance—engaging viewers in environments that question the endurance of art itself.