Neil Tetkowski was born in 1955 in Buffalo, New York.

As a child, Tetkowski had the opportunity to travel extensively with his family and had an early fascination with different cultures. He lived in Siena, Italy in the early 60s and by the time he was eight he had crossed the Atlantic three times by ocean liner and had visited more than 20 countries. Today, Tetkowski creates art that communicates beyond cultural barriers. It is with this global perspective that he has pursued his artwork.

Tetkowski has led many public art performances with community participation. These events and installations reflect his conviction that art can be a vital community process accessible to a broad audience.

Neil Tetkowski is the founder and director of the Common Ground World Project, an international non-governmental organization that uses the arts and education to focus attention on global environmental concerns. In 1997, Tetkowski presented this concept to several offices at the United Nations. Within a few months, the Common Ground World Project was officially endorsed by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. A tremendous effort was required to recruit, motivate and coordinate people around the world, to extract earth from their country and send it to New York. The project culminated during the spring of 2000 when Tetkowski built a sculpture on location at the United Nations using these unique earth materials and physically involved people from every country of the world. The completed World Mandala Monument was exhibited at the  HYPERLINK "http://www.tetkowski.com/pressrelease.html" United Nations in 2002. The Ford Foundation made a generous grant to support the final fabrication and installation of the World Mandala Monument in the main visitor's lobby at the UN in New York.

Neil Tetkowski has given numerous lectures and workshops throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, South America, Cuba, Korea, and Japan, including the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, the Honolulu Academy of Arts in Hawaii and the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. He is an elected lifetime member of the International Academy of Ceramics in Zurich and an Honorary Citizen of Kanazawa, Japan.

Tetkowski has received numerous grants and fellowships. His work is widely published and placed in permanent collections of 40 museums including the Victoria and Albert in London, the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American Art, in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.

Tetkowski earned his BFA in 1977 at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. In 1980 he received his MFA from Illinois State University. He taught at Denison University in Ohio until 1983. During the following four years Tetkowski was an Assistant Professor of art at the State University College at Buffalo and from 1993 through 1999 he taught at Parsons School of Design.  Neil Tetkowski lives in Manhattan and is the Director of University Galleries at Kean University in Union, New Jersey.