Charlie Fornia is a multi-media artist, teacher, designer, and concerned citizen. He was born and raised in Washington State and currently lives and works in Chicago.

Biographical Artist's Statement
I was raised in a home split by divorce that may have otherwise been working-class. My mother attended community college for art, my father was a long-haul truck driver, and I spent a great deal of time alone. In the home I was exposed to alcoholism, teen pregnancy, obesity, poverty, domestic abuse, animal abuse, multiple bankruptcies, unemployment, drug abuse by multiple family members, and a variety of mental illnesses. At sixteen, I weighed 360 pounds and spent most of my time playing video games, eating, and drawing comics.
I was baptized young and raised listening to conservative talk radio. My family was once asked to leave a Baptist church due to my mother's living situation with a man she eventually married. It was the first of one of many negative experiences I had with churches that failed to function according to any sort of Biblical model. After graduating high school, I worked a manual labor job for the summer before being hired to work 12-hour graveyard shifts at a factory that produced plastic bottles for milk and motor oil. After several months of this, I decided to apply for colleges, and ended up receiving a great deal of financial aid to attend a Presbyterian Liberal Arts College. I am grateful to have been asked repeatedly at that time to begin truly thinking for myself.
My first writing teacher (after I had written a morbid summer adventure about two mentally ill poor boys that earned me a scholarship) asked me to meet with her. She was surprised that someone with such an unusual background ended up at her college. I explained to her that I didn't think my background was that unusual, and I was surprised so many people would be shocked to hear my stories, fiction or non-fiction. My art comes from trailer parks, truck stops, and the production line and lands somewhere in the space between my professor's initial inquiry and my reply.