Professor, Fine Arts/Graphic Arts & Art Curator

Matthew Weber has been studying, creating, exhibiting and teaching art for nearly 20 years. He is associate professor of fine arts and graphic arts and is the art curator for the College. In this role, he coordinates and oversees the different on-campus exhibit opportunities for students and faculty, developing themes for the display areas and galleries, reviewing art submissions, and helping select art to be displayed.

As an artist, Matt creates sculptures that explore the interdependence of environmental form and architectonic structure. He is particularly interested in the physical and symbolic transformation of natural materials into built forms and their decline toward cyclical decay.

Matt encourages students to find their own medium and inspiration to create original, expressive art. He uses contrasting surfaces in his own art—which has been displayed in solo and group exhibits in Connecticut, the United States and internationally. Notable exhibit locations include the Carnegie Gallery in Ontario, Canada, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Mich., the Seton Art Gallery at the University of New Haven in Conn., the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn., the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., and the Artiade in Athens, Greece.

The focus of Matt’s art has been to mediate the physical struggle between the geological and biological origins of environmental forms with the ordered and structured tendencies of human intervention. This earned him several distinguished grant awards: the Connecticut Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts (2004 and 2010) which was created to “encourage the continuing artistic development of Connecticut’s finest creative artists;” and the New Boston Fund Individual Artist Fellowship from the Greater Hartford Arts Council (2006), which was developed to “reinforce the importance and value of artists within our community.”

His work has been included in articles and reviews that have appeared in The New York Times, the Hartford Courant, The Boston Globe, The Hartford Advocate, New Haven Register, New Britain Herald, Worcester Magazine, Haber’s Art Reviews, and Art New England.

Matt received his MFA degree in sculpture from the University of Connecticut and a BFA degree in sculpture from the Hartford Art School. Prior to joining MxCC, Matt was a studio art and art history instructor at the Hartford Art School, Naugatuck Valley Community College, Springfield College, the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, Tunxis Community College, and the University of Connecticut.

He lives in Unionville, Conn., with his wife, Liria, and their children, Samuel, Nikolas and Nagore.

Matthew Weber Studio website: https://matthewweber42985950.wordpress.com/