Artist Talks
Here at LA Tactile Lab we offer a dynamic set of artist lectures. These talks are offered in person at our LAB in DTLA, some will be offered virtually and hybrid. Please check to see the format. Every lecture is a suggested donation $10 to raise funds for those impacted by the recent fires and to help support artists.
February 22nd 4PM
Minga Opazo
Minga Opazo is a fourth-generation textile crafter who explores the relationship between climate change, contemporary textile production, and Chilean textile history and design. Born in Chile, Minga immigrated to Los Angeles at the age of 16. Opazo recent works, questions the textile industry by creating a series of cultural works that explore the idea of solastalgia, a term which describes the mental or existential distress caused by environmental change and living in an era of excess, constantly consuming and throwing away.In her practice, she is dedicated to research the textile industry further and to create work that exposes, reflects and finds a solution to the current situation of the textile waste industry. She completed her BFA at University of California, Berkeley in 2016 and her MFA at California Institute of the Arts, 2020. Opazo exhibited works across the US and Latino America, including the Museum of Visual art of Santiago, Chile,ACRE gallery in Chicago and the Bunker Art Space part of the Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody. In Los Angeles, her work has been shown at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Craft contemporary, and Sargent’s daughter gallery.She has been awarded with various residency including Banff art center, ACRE residency and Haystack mountain school of craft, Anderson Ranch Art center, Mass Moca and Bemis Art center. She recently had her work published at Artforum, Lum art magazine and American Science magazine.
March 1st 4PM
Sasha Fishman
Sasha Fishman is a sculptor and researcher based in New York. She is particularly interested in marine biomaterials, toxicology and energy harvesting as points for critical analysis and mechanisms for sculpting. She is a recent MFA Sculpture graduate from Columbia University where she collaborated with labs on salmon, fountains, and carbon capture materials. Sasha is a 2024 Puffins Grant recipient and a current Artist in Residence at Smack Mellon.
Fishman has exhibited her work at Below Grand (New York), Resort (Maryland), Hesse Flatow (New York), Bozomag (Los Angeles), ILY2 (Portland), The Jewish Museum (New York), and The Indian Ceramics Triennale (New Delhi, India). She has participated in residencies at Smack Mellon (New York), Art Ichol (India), Acre (Wisconsin), NAHR (Italy) and the High Desert Observatory (California). Fishman has presented her work and run workshops at Printed Matter (New York), Genspace (New York), Navel (Los Angeles), Carnegie Mellon, UCLA (Los Angeles), UDenver (Colorado), UColorado Boulder (Colorado), Kenyon College (Ohio), MICA (Maryland), Caltech (California), and CSULB (California).
Sasha will teaching an Experimental Bioplastics workshops March 1st prior to her lecture. Sign up for both!
March 22nd 2PM with 4PM gallery walk through
Kayla Mattes
Kayla Mattes (b. 1989, Los Angeles, CA, USA) archives the ephemeral vernacular of digital culture through the interconnected threads of weaving. Her hand woven tapestries embrace the narrative and technological history embedded in the act of materializing thread into the woven grid. Driven by
meme-culture, current events, and the anxiety of our digital lives, her work weaves together narratives that simultaneously act as jokes and social commentary.
Mattes received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2011 and her MFA from University of California Santa Barbara in 2019. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including Eli & Edythe Broad Museum (Michigan), Charlie James Gallery, (Los Angeles), Asia Art
Center (Taipei and Beijing), Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (Portland, OR), Torrance Art Museum, Richard Heller Gallery (Los Angeles), and Collaborations (Copenhagen). She is one of twenty weavers included in the 2018 book, Weaving: Contemporary Makers on the Loom and her work has
been featured in Artnet, MacGuffin Magazine, New American Paintings, and i-D Magazine. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
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March 29th 4PM
Molly Haynes
Molly Haynes (b. 1992) is an artist and weaver based in San Pedro, California. Her material-driven works blur the line between humans and the natural world, often appearing both organic and mechanical. Haynes earned her B.F.A. in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design and went on to design for the interior textiles industry, where she gained a deep understanding of fibers and the construction of cloth. After several years, she delved into her personal practice to focus on handmade works that are free of utilitarian constraints. Her work has been exhibited internationally including Egg Collective, New York, NY; Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran, Montreal, CA; Compound, Long Beach, CA; and la BEAST Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been featured in magazines including Luxe, W Magazine, and Dovetail Magazine. She has given artist talks at schools and institutions, most recently at Craft in America in Los Angeles. She attended the Open Studio Residency at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in 2019 and returned in 2024 as teaching faculty.
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April 26th 4PM
Thomas Martinez Pilnik
Artist lecture with Thomas Martinez Pilnik Saturday April 26th at 4pm.
Thomas Martinez Pilnik (b. 1993) was raised in London by Brazilian parents. Pilnik then moved to the US and obtained his BA in Studio Art and Cognitive Science from the University of
Virginia, M.Ed in Postsecondary Education from the University of Southern California, and MFA from the University of Connecticut. He is now based in Los Angeles.
Pilnik has exhibited internationally in spaces including Moosey Gallery and Arusha in London, SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York, Zaratan Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon, and Hashimoto Contemporary in Los Angeles, and has created installations and works in collaboration with organizations such as the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health and Downtown Providence Parks Conservancy. He has been an artist-in-residence at Zaratan, McKenzie Gibson Studios in Rhode Island, Stove Works in Tennessee, Art House San Clemente, The Wassaic Project in Upstate New York. Pilnik is also the co-founder of Feia, a new gallery and design studio that celebrates all things imperfect.
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Register for the lecture here.
May 3rd 4PM
Christy Matson
Artist lecture with Christy Matson Saturday May 3rd 4pm.
Christy Matson is a Los Angeles-based artist specializing in woven, wall-mounted works created with a hand-operated Jacquard loom. Her process integrates watercolor, ink, and collage into digital compositions that guide her weaving, blending precision with improvisation. Matson has had solo exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Cranbrook Art Museum, and the Long Beach Museum of Art, and her work has been in numerous group exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Renwick Gallery. Her works are in several permanent collections including LACMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Milwaukee Musuem of Art and the Mint Museum in North Carolina. Matson has held academic appointments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, California State University Long Beach and Harvey Mud College and is a former board member of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
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Register for the talk here.
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May 24th 4PM
Hannah Epstein
Artist lecture with Hannah Epstein Saturday May 24th 4pm - ONLINE
Hannah Epstein grew up in remote Nova Scotia before going to college in even more remote Newfoundland where she studied folklore and learned how to make hooked rugs. After getting her MFA at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, she added conceptual rigor to her practice and became, as she calls herself, “a feminist folklorist of the internet age.” Her hooked rugs of monsters, internet memes and historically-inspired creatures are both humorous and disconcerting.
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Reserve your spot here
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May 31st 4PM
Kim Garcia
Artist lecture with Kim Garcia Saturday May 31st 4pm.
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Kim Garcia is an artist working in sculpture, drawing, and painting. Her practice centers on oral storytelling to explore the complexities of inheritance, postcolonial identity, and memory. Kim comes from a background in creating collaborative community projects that often employ alternative spaces to explore studio art practices, site-specific collaboration, and museum and exhibition research. She is the founder of The Cold Read, an online critique group and artist collective that engages gestures of care and support through writing and is one of the co-founders of after hours gallery, an art gallery in Los Angeles that hosts two-person exhibitions. Kim has had solo exhibitions at Phase Gallery (2023), Best Practice (2019), and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2017) and has exhibited in group exhibitions at Luis De Jesus, Feia, ICALA, Torrance Art Museum, and Human Resources. Kim is based in Los Angeles and received her BA from UC San Diego and her MFA from UC Irvine.​
Register for the talk here.
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