Matt Vallon Talley
Matt Vallon Talley hails from Tarzana, California and studied theatre design and technology at San Diego State University. He is a scenic designer and production fabricator with experience in various practices such as carpentry, welding, and both mechanical and digital drafting.
Before he started building sets he took the stage in youth theatre with ACT-1 LA, starring in productions like Grease, Shrek Jr., and even Seussical the Musical twice! Though even before that he snapped his first lego bricks together and never stopped, often deviating from building manuals to create custom creations inspired by the Saturday morning cartoons he grew up on, such as StarWars: the Clone Wars and Teen Titans.
In university, he had the opportunity to design scenery for “The Crucible” with Skull & Dagger Dramatic Society, which he won the McKenzie award for in Fall of 2024. He dove feet first into the student organization theatre community serving as treasurer for Dagger and then technical director for several productions both with Skull & Dagger and Black Renaissance.
His works often explore themes of brotherhood and found family, or tangentially how one both stands alone as an individual and builds community with their peers and neighbors.
How can two people who don’t speak the same language begin to understand each other? I believe Art is the ultimate bridge between different experiences, every form, each piece a brick in the road between strangers.
The work of any artist then, and indeed my work is to lay bricks. To create scenery for the theatre which aides actors in their play and audiences in their immersion. Or to sculpt standalone installations as monuments to the human experience. And to write prose which gathers scattered feelings and facilitates understanding of the self and of the world.
And the work is never finished, we only step away to rest before taking up our tools again.