Dike Blair was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania in 1952. He studied at the University of Colorado, the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture before receiving his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1977. He is also a writer and a professor at RISD. A collection of his writings, "Again: Selected Interviews and Essays" was published by WhiteWalls in 2007. In 2009, he was the subject of a ten-year survey at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Public collections include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.