Colleen de Matta (she/her, b. 1995) is an artist residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She pursues work in textile art where she creates pieces through tufting and crochet + knitting work in her home studio. de Matta’s work focuses on the process of making - she creates through the exploration of materials and allows them to direct how the piece evolves. In her textile work, she allows the pieces to spontaneously develop themselves through the exploration of texture, layers, and color mixing. She is interested in process as a means of learning and discovering - it reveals all properties and potential of a material that otherwise remain obscured. 

de Matta is native to Iowa City where she grew up and attended school at Iowa State University. Upon earning her bachelor’s in architecture and minor in sustainability in 2019, she began her early design career at William Rawn Associates, Architects, Inc. in Boston where her focus has been on projects primarily within the performing arts and education realm. Her largest contributions involve the exterior design of the Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts at Colby College in Maine. (completed in 2023) and interior renovation of Brookline High School in Boston (completed in 2022).  Her latest work includes the exterior design of the Virginia Commonwealth Center for Performing Arts (expected completion in 2026). de Matta’s interest in architecture for the arts derives from her involvement in music since a small child, when she began piano studies, and later, string bass performance.  She continues to pursue music through playing with the Harvard Graduate School Student Center Orchestra.