Donald Ivan Fontowitz is the Department Head of Visual Arts at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, San Francisco where he teaches AP Studio Art and Global Art History. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley.

He has been teaching at Ruth Asawa SOTA for 20 years in the English and Visual Arts department and is a National Board Certified teacher in Visual Art.  

Mr. Fontowitz is an artist and musician as well as an educator.  He has shown his paintings in San Francisco at the SFMOMA Rental Gallery, New York’s Cavin-Morris Gallery and Philadelphia's Fleisher Gallery. He currently studies Tibetan Thangka painting in San Francisco with Jamyong Singye, master Thangka painter from Eastern Tibet in the Karma Gadri style. Mr. Fontowitz continues to work on his own style of organic abstraction.

Mr. Fontowitz has been closely associated with Native peoples in Mexico and North America.  He is formally adopted as a nephew by the Southern Cheyenne Elder and Sacred Arrow holder, Eugene Black Bear Sr., from Watonga, Oklahoma.  Mr. Fontowitz has been working with Mr. Black Bear as a student and assistant in ceremonies of the sweat lodge and Native American Church for twelve years.  

He is also a musician, a former professional Flamenco guitarist and folk and blue grass guitarist and studies North Indian Classical Chatturangui with Arjun Verma & Alam Khan at the Ali Akbar Kahn College of Music in San Rafael and performs in the Bay Area with East Indian kirtan groups.

For any inquiries, please contact Donald Ivan Fontowitz at dfontowitz@mac.com.