Keith Tallett

Keith Tallett is a mixed media artist who was born and raised in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. He is also a second generation surfboard shaper and tattoo practitioner of traditional Polynesian patterns. The process of making art for him becomes a way of creating dialogue between his cultural knowledge and practices, and his investigations as a contemporary artist. Keith has an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BA from the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He has exhibited at such venues as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles, and Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York. His professional experience includes lecturing at the University of Hawaii at Hilo Art Department from 2004 – 2011 as well as being a founding member of AGGROculture, a Hawaii based art collective. Keith was included in the 2011 Artists of Hawaii exhibition at the Honolulu Museum of Art where he received the Jean Charlot Foundation Award for Excellence. He was also awarded a 2011 Cultural Apprenticeship Grant through the Folk Art Program at Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, and was nationally recognized when he received a 2013 Joan Mitchell Foundation Sculptor and Painter Grant. Tallett also creates work collaboratively with artist Sally Lundburg under the name Les Filter Feeders. The duo participated in the 2014 Present Project International residency in O’ahu, as the only invited artists from Hawaii. Other exhibitions include The Rat and The Octopus at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center’s Schaefer International Gallery (2016), The Middle of Now | Here – The Honolulu Biennial 2017 and Tropical Disturbance at The Luggage Store in San Francisco (2018).  See more of Keith’s work at www.keithtallett.com and  www.lesfilterfeeders.com