Joshua Hagler lived and worked in San Francisco and then Los Angeles for fifteen years before moving to rural New Mexico in 2018 as a grant recipient of the year-long Roswell Artist in Residence Program. He was born at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho in 1979 and is a first-generation college graduate with a visual communications degree from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Having not attended an art school or received an MFA, Hagler identifies as a working class artist. Self-directed research and travel has underpinned Hagler’s career and is essential to how the artist integrates creative influences with his life experience.