Artist Statement

Matt Locke is an interdisciplinary artist who combines drafting, model-making, collage, architectural design, and woodworking in mixed media wall sculptures. Locke is interested in the infrastructure, maps, and machines that underpin civilization, and the surface treatments of that technology as expressed in design, fashion, culture, marketing, and architecture through historical eras. Locke is an artist and historian by training; an engineer and builder by nature.

Bio

Matt Locke (b. 1969, Colorado) received his BA from Princeton (1993) and has leveraged careers in both design and fine art. Matt was an exchange student in France (1986), studied art for one semester at SCAD (1988), and industrial design for another at the Institute of Design at IIT in Chicago (1993). Matt designed and built his own house in Colorado at age 27, introduced a line of functional sculpture objects as one of eight Emerging Artists at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver (2004), then relocated to Los Angeles to pursue art and design full-time. Matt appeared on Jeopardy! (2007) and was a finalist on HGTV Design Star (2008). Between 2009 to 2019, Matt created custom commissions for private and corporate clients, including large scale site-specific architectural installations. Between 2020 to 2024, Matt created and exhibited three new collections of fine art: The End Is Here –mixed media wall sculptures of nostalgia for lost eras; Eyes of the Beholder – geometric collages about humans’ relationships to their machines; and Chaos Theory – intricate collages examining how limited information upsets complex systems. Currently Matt is finishing a commission piece about the city of Chicago and completing a large-scale installation series of subway cars.

Education

Princeton University, Princeton, NJ BA in American history 1993

Institute Of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL Study in industrial design

Savannah College Of Art & Design, Savannah, GA Study in fine art

Exhibitions

2026 Intersect, Palm Springs, California

2024 Art Walk, City Club, Los Angeles, California

2023 Private Museum Exhibition, Knoll House, Pasadena, California

2015 Dwell on Design, Los Angeles, California

2009 Dwell on Design, Los Angeles, California

2004 Cherry Creek Arts Festival, Denver, Colorado

1995 Art Has Function, Max Art, Colorado Springs, Colorado

1985 Biennial, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Press

Room Fu: Grit, Glamour & the Glitterati

ShoutOut LA: Meet Matt Locke