Richard Conn is best known as a creator of popular San Antonio event posters including Fiesta, NIOSA, and the Jazz'SAlive festival, although his work in other media, painting, printmaking, and paperwork have also found an international audience. Conn studied in his home state of Iowa before being transferred by his employer to Texas in the late fifties where he attended art classes part time at the Houston Museum School, University of Texas San Antonio, SW School of Art and Craft ,and the San Antonio Art Institute. In 1976 he gave up a successful business career to devote full time to his art and establish the first of his studio galleries, Richard Conn Graphics.

From 1990 to 2010 he was the Owner/Director of the Nueva Street Gallery in the historic arts district of La Villita, San Antonio, where he showed his own work and the art and craft of contemporary Texas artists.