Chris Sollars is artist, musician, and Associate Professor in Sculpture, Mills College at Northeastern, Oakland, CA. Awards include 2022 MacDowell Fellowship, 2022 Ucross Foundation Residency, 2022 Jentel Artist Residency, 2021 Gate 27 Istanbul Residence, 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2013 San Francisco Arts Commission: Individual Artist Commission Grant, 2012 Center for Cultural Innovation Investing in Artists Grant, 2007 Eureka Fellowship Award, 2007 San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Grant, 2009 Headlands Center for the Arts residency, & 2015 Recology Artist in Residence. Since 2016, instrument construction, music, and lyrics have become an integral way to turn his discontent for manmade environmental and social catastrophes into soundtracks for his art. Sollars’ travels have also resulted in bands as art around the globe that include 💀ture (Skullture) San Francisco, Egzoz (exhaust) Istanbul, and 307 Outlaws an integrational alt country band in Sheridan, Wyoming. $ollar$ is his solo music project playing featuring guitars, vocals, and percussion built from chains, trash cans, wheels, stop signs, and drum machines to create the spectrum of composed and improvised fuzzed stoner pysch songs with melodic overtones.

“Manmade environmental and social catastrophes are a catalyst for me to subvert public space through absurd performance interventions through art, food, and music. I work on site in the street and landscape to have immediate interaction with a public audience and to collect society’s detritus for site specific works that are serious to humorous. These results are documented with sound, video and photography that are integrated into mixed-media installations. Working with an anti-capitalist frame and informed by research, I create playful solitary and social performances mediated through outfits and props to investigate my internal questioning and to help contribute thoughtful collective experiences as amplified listening.”