Matthew Giddings

📸: Matthew on the Elsewhere stage by Daniel White, September 2022

Executive Director

Matthew Giddings is an artist, a parent of three and a co-parent, an educator, and a 20-year veteran of the non-profit industrial complex. They instigate intergenerational creative collaborations where the needs, dreams, and surplus of their community intersect.

They have been privileged to perform the role of caretaker and steward of Elsewhere since 2020. At the end of the first week on the job as a first-time Executive Director, COVID-19 shut down the museum for 15 months. Matthew has worked to honor and amplify the creative spirit of everyone who encounters the organization, and to nurture the reunification of creativity and life in all spheres of our ecosystem.

As M.T. Giddings, they use multiple identities to frame idiosyncratic explorations that repurpose found material into visual or aural collage. Current projects include building an album of postcards with parallel visual and aural collages (as M.T.), a comic book journey through philately and mail art as an alien with a triangular hairdo (as Mather Seerlo), a performative lecture on the true legacy of the artist Robert Indiana (as MTRobertIndiana), pantomime as a shadow (as MT Shadow), a fusion of British drag with Mother Ginger from the Nutcracker (as Mother Gildings), and a performance and romance novel as a genderqueer merperson (GinGerMerPerSon). More to come…

Self-portrait of Matthew in front of Lake Michigan in Chicago with exactly one snowflake, mere moments before coming to Elsewhere (February 2022)

Matthew as Energy Vampire for Extravaganza 2022

photo: Daniel White; design: Chris Lee; concept: Matthew Giddings