Gardner also teaches in the Honors Program at Drake, and has co-taught travel seminars to Cyprus and Cuba. He received his M.F.A. from Illinois State University and B.F.A. from Millikin University. Gardner has had recent exhibitions at Gallery Molly Krom in New York, DUSK Editions in Brooklyn, and at the Spartanburg Art Museum in South Carolina. One of his short experimental films will be screened at CICA in South Korea in the fall of 2017, and he has exhibited works on paper in France and Germany.