Benjamin Spalding

Benjamin Spalding is an interdisciplinary artist based in Portland, Maine. Taking inspiration from his Puerto Rican grandfather’s profession as a big band leader, Spalding’s practice is preoccupied with movement and the pageantry of the body, weaving together elements of club culture, sports, and nature with family history.

While receiving a degree in media studies from NYU, Spalding developed a love for figuration, photography and visual narrative while working as a stylist assistant at publications such as Interview Magazine, and Men’s Vogue. After New York, Spalding relocated to Berlin, Germany for 8 years to define his studio practice. It is in Berlin where he began to find a love for club culture, and music as a potent mechanism for connection and exploring memory. Upon resettling in Maine, his practice began to shift into working with family photographs, found images, sporting equipment and local ecology. Spalding has also worked as part of the creative force behind Visceral, a queer techno part in Boston. He received his MFA from Maine College of Art & Design (2017) and currently teaches in the Sculpture and Foundations departments.