This artist talk is part of the Group Exhibition Survival Tools for the Age of Ultra Anxiety held at Culture Lab LIC at Plaxall Gallery. RSVP on Facebook.

Claire Chambless (b.1989, Houston, TX) is a sculptor whose practice encompasses object-making, photography, video and installation. She received her MFA in Art from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2020 and completed her undergraduate studies in 2012 at Davidson College, Davidson, NC. Her work has been shown in museums, galleries and public spaces, including the the MAK Center Mackey Apartments; Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta; California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA; Serious Projects, Los Angeles; TZ Projects, Los Angeles; La MaMa Gallery, New York, NY; Michael David & Co., New York; UCLA’s New Wight Biennial, Los Angeles; among others. She was a 2017-2018 Walthall Fellow, and is the founder of commons, a Los Angeles-based space and knowledge sharing project that organizes exhibitions, performances, screenings and reading groups. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles. 

Matthew Garrison was born in Albany, NY, and grew up in Chicago. After living and working in New York City for eleven years, he moved to Pennsylvania to teach art and technology at Albright College.   His work explores a dialog among intimate space, landscape and the environment. Humor and irony collide with issues of online privacy and our impact on the planet. Selected exhibitions and screenings include A Horse Walks Into a Bar, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; International New York Film Festival, NYC; Sound in Art/Art in Sound, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Saint Paul; Bridges and Portals, St. Paul the Apostle Church, NYC; Polymorphous, Cluster Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Be Right Back, solo exhibition, Hunter College, NYC; Based On a True Story, traveling three person exhibition, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Marshall Arts, Memphis, TN; Certain Conditions, the Waterfront Center for the Arts, Belfast, Ireland; International Video Festival, Alternative Space Bandee, Busan, Korea; Dusk, Video_DIVA, Miami; SUPERvision (1st place award), the University of Wisconsin’s Foster Gallery; and Memorial Exhibition, International Arts Center, Higashi Hiroshima City, Japan. He received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Hunter College.

Nicki Cherry is a visual artist based in Queens, New York. Cherry received their MFA from Yale School of Art in 2019 and their BA from The University of Chicago in 2014. In 2014, they completed a residency at Tyler School of Art. They are a recent scholarship recipient at Urban Glass in Brooklyn, NY. They have exhibited their work nationally, including at the ELM Foundation and Shin Gallery in New York; Icebox Project Space in Philadelphia; Archer Beach Haus, the Reva David Logan Center for the Arts, and Slate Arts and Performance in Chicago; and Green Hall Gallery in New Haven. Their work has been written about in publications including Arte Fuse, Coastal Post, Art of Choice, and Floorr Magazine. This past summer, they presented their first solo exhibition at the Border Project Space in Brooklyn, NY.