Austin is a professional artist who has worked in independent schools since 1993 teaching Studio Art, Ceramics, and Photography. Austin joined Forman in 2014 as an art teacher, assisting with boat building (he built his own boat at the age of 10) and coaching the recreational ski team.   He is now Art Department Chair and head of the sailing program. 

His father an avid mariner, Austin learned as a toddler to sail a Sunfish, in the waters of the Long Island Sound off of Mystic, Connecticut. The Peace Corps and a boating enterprise ultimately found Austin’s family in the South Pacific, where he was raised in Fiji and the Kingdom of Tonga before returning to the United States for high school and college.  Spending his college summers as an assistant sailing instructor at Blueberry Cove Camp in Tenants Harbor, Maine, Austin now spends his summers back in Mystic, day sailing his catboat and teaching the youngest family members how to sail a sunfish. 

Austin graduated from Alfred University with his BFA in 1986, and from Cranbrook Academy of Art with his MFA in 1988.  He lives on campus in the Carriage House.