Claremont Temporary is a new collective of artists, curators, and educators based in the Claremont area. Established through a series of dialogues among local creatives, Claremont Temporary emerged in response to the limited availability of responsive and inclusive contemporary art venues in the region.
Claremont Temporary fosters exploration and experimentation by providing exhibition opportunities for early- and mid-career artists and curators. Through its programming, the collective aims to cultivate new dialogues within the Claremont arts community and expand the presence of contemporary art in the area.
Claremont Temporary is a production of Curious Publishing, a 100% artist owned and operated grassroots small press and artist think tank amplifying marginalized voices in Southern California. Curious Publishing is Fiscally Sponsored by The Arts Area, a Non-Profit 501(c)3 Organization operating out of Upland, CA since 2017.
About Us
Keith Ballard, Co Founder
Keith Ballard is an interdisciplinary artist and CalArts alumni based in Claremont, California, working across woodworking, video, painting, and performance. His practice is a rigorous interrogation of the American suburban milieu, mining pop culture, drug use, and punk iconography to expose profound themes of alienation and trauma. Though the work possesses a crucial element of humor, it remains absent of jokes. Ballard employs himself as a strategic simulacrum, creating work designed to examine the mechanisms of white male violence inherent in these cultural spaces.
Vince Skelly, Co Founder
Vince Skelly (b. 1987, lives and works in Claremont, California) combines process, collective memory, and material to create wooden sculptures that explore the space between sculptural form and functional object. Using wood from a variety of trees from the west coast, Skelly works reductively to shape each stool, chair, or abstract form from a single block. Following grain, patterns, knots, and other characteristics inherent to the material, Skelly teases out simplified and essential forms that emerge in consort with the uniqueness and singularity of each block.
Rebecca Ustrell, Co Founder
Rebecca Ustrell is an artist, educator, and documentarian in the Inland Empire of Southern California. In 2018 after a long period of creative burn-out, she leaned into her life-long passion for printed ephemera and founded Curious Publishing, a non-profit artbook publishing company which focuses on archiving stories and creating wealth by supporting queer, BIPOC, and femme creatives through small-run artbooks, zines, and print collections. In 2023-2024, she was the Activist Artist in Residence for the Community Engagement Center at Pitzer College, and is currently the Event Coordinator for Museum Arts & Culture at the City of Ontario.
Seth Pringle, Advisor
Seth Pringle was born and raised in rural Ohio. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics from Ohio University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Claremont Graduate University. He currently serves as Director at the Claremont Lewis Museum of Art, where he has been on staff since 2022. Pringle brings to this role a wide range of experience in the non-profit arts sector with expertise in art education, curating, collection management, marketing, and development. He has served a variety of organizations in the Inland Empire and Southern California, including the Sam & Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts & Crafts, the Ontario Museum of History & Art, Pitzer College, Scripps College, Chaffey College, the dA Center for the Arts, and spent 11 years representing artists with developmental disabilities as Gallery Manager at First Street Gallery Art Center in Claremont.