Villa Maria College’s Catalyst Visiting Artist Series begins its second year with a talk by artist Mary Mattingly. Made possible with the support of Mike and Josette Taheri, Catalyst began in the Fall of 2024 as an effort to connect students with exceptional artists and thinkers through talks, studio visits, and workshops. Previous visiting artists have included Mark Dion, Arghavan Khosravi, and Andres Serrano. Mary Mattingly is widely celebrated for her ambitious sculpture installations and functional artworks that address themes of climate resiliency and ecological harm. Mattingly describes her practice further:
Villa Maria College’s Catalyst Visiting Artist Series begins its second year with a talk by artist Mary Mattingly. Made possible with the support of Mike and Josette Taheri, Catalyst began in the Fall of 2024 as an effort to connect students with exceptional artists and thinkers through talks, studio visits, and workshops. Previous visiting artists have included Mark Dion, Arghavan Khosravi, and Andres Serrano. Mary Mattingly is widely celebrated for her ambitious sculpture installations and functional artworks that address themes of climate resiliency and ecological harm. Mattingly describes her practice further:
Mary Mattingly is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores ecological relationships through sculptural ecosystems and collage.
Her public projects, such as Swale, a floating food forest in New York City’s waterways; Waterpod, a self-sufficient living structure on a barge; and the Flock House Project, a series of mobile habitats, address urgent issues around water, food systems, and climate adaptation.
Mattingly’s work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Storm King Art Center, the International Center of Photography, the Barbican, Seoul Art Center, and the Palais de Tokyo. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Yale School of Art, A Blade of Grass, and the Anchorage Museum among others. Her work has been featured in Art21, The New York Times, and Le Monde.
At the core of Mattingly’s practice is a belief in art as a form of investigation and a tool for imagination.
Please join us on October 8 at 7 PM for Mattingly’s talk at Villa Maria’s Recital Hall at 240 Pine Ridge Rd, Buffalo. Refreshments will be served around the talk. Mattingly will also lead a student workshop and studio visits with upper level fine arts students.
In the spring of 2026, Villa will continue the Catalyst series with a visit from curator Denise Markonish.
