Steven Montgomery was born in Detroit, Michigan. He received a Bachelor Of Philosophy degree in 1976 from Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan where he focused on both ceramics and printmaking. In 1978 he received a Master of Fine Arts from the Tyler School of Art of Temple University in Philadelphia where he studied with the porcelain innovator Rudolph Staffel. At Tyler he began his first forays into alternative approaches to methods of low-fired, mixed media ceramic construction and the oil painted ceramic surface treatments that have been a signature of his work throughout his career. He has been awarded Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (’90, ‘2006, ‘2009), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (’99,’16), and awards for ceramic sculpture at international exhibitions in Korea (Gold Prize,’03) and Taiwan (Gold Prize,’04, Merit Prize,’06). He was a 2012 recipient of a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship working as an artist in residence at the National Air And Space Museum in Washington, DC. His work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery in Washington DC and numerous other public and private collections throughout the US and abroad. He currently teaches at Hunter College, lives in Manhattan and works in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.