Kurt Fondriest is a Chicago mixed-media artist, Registered Expressive Arts Therapist, and expressive arts minister.

His work draws from lived experiences of chronic pain, medications, mental health, family, and memory. Using portraits, prescription papers, medicine containers, cardboard, fabric, glitter, paint, and found objects, he turns ordinary materials into intensely personal stories. Humor runs through the work because some of the hardest parts of life can also be strangely funny.

Fondriest earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Columbus College of Art & Design. From 1991 to 2019, he served as an expressive arts therapist at Misericordia Home in Chicago.