https://www.mdsmithstudio.com/work daily 1.0 2023-03-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1517851009095-QR3V1J9INDW004I1L2I7/4.1+i+don%27t+know+when+but+a+day%27s+gonna+come+%28detail%29.jpg Work i don’t know when but a day’s gonna come creates an apocalyptic sense of space and time using rocks painted with verses and imagery from the Book of Revelations. The verses, which describe the second coming of Jesus, read like descriptions of the contemporary issues regarding climate change. The painted rocks call up the passion and intensity of folk art to deliver an otherworldly message while the moving light gives an unnerving liveliness to the whole scene. i don’t know when but a day’s gonna come enables everyday objects to perform a foreboding message about future possibilities. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1517851075582-D14UGBZB3IPYRFAJ8MX6/3.1++The+Thin+Places+%28detail%29.JPG Work The Thin Places describes the Celtic idea of moments where heaven and earth meet or where we find ourselves closer to a spiritual realm. For the video, I created a series of fishing bobbers which were then used on a nearby lake. Watching the video parallels the act of fishing with its patient waiting for the potential catch. The bobbers act as the sole indicator for any life under the surface of the water. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1517937159986-BVAEQGJPU8C1WOU41WRH/X+Marks+the+Spot.JPG Work On February 10th, the date Boulder was “founded,” I slept in a handmade tent where the first white explorers settled in the area in their search for gold. X Marks the Spot was a performance that drew upon the palpable history of Settler’s Park. Through its red rocks, scattered pines, and howling winds, one can experience a landscape in a similar way to those who resided there over a century ago. Situated on the outskirts of town, these red rock outcroppings hold the messy anthropocentric intersection of nature and culture. Look to the east and one sees the sprawl of Boulder. Look to the west and it is difficult to find much human evidence. The saying “x marks the spot” reveals a double meaning. Not only does it imply a treasured spot on a map, but the English army would draw an ‘x’ on a paper held over the heart of a criminal about to be executed. The adage quickly connects to early settlers’ discoveries of gold, but more subtly alludes to the violent actions against the land and communities that preceded them. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1517938186177-IZF0E67GC19TBMTO3D3P/we-all-move-forward-rabbit.JPG Work We All Move Forward was a temporary public intervention that took place on the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado. Along the walking paths, I drew signage in sidewalk chalk acknowledging the three non-human animals that I saw using the pathways most often. Simple images of squirrels, dogs, and rabbits signify that humans are not the only animals using these sidewalks. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1520200463524-1Q7W2FDOBU4SUI4C7076/from_bronx_to_byram_full.jpg Work From Bronx to Byram chronicles the six rivers I crossed each day on the way to my residency at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY. Each pipe follows the path of the actual river. I built the pipes out of clay I collected from the sink traps and then applied waste glaze as a varnish. Each piece was hung with plumber’s hardware. By filling the porcelain buckets with the polluted water from each river and sitting them atop a pile of riverbed dirt, I attempted to create a hybrid object of high and low materials. Underneath each bucket is a tap light that illuminates the water through the translucent porcelain. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1520212492728-2ZNGDY220HH3WJZ9XIZ8/block_by_block_performance.jpg Work - Block by Block https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1517957475774-U8TMIVF6ZSERMEWOX4FI/for-nature-is-the-best-possible-antidote.JPG Work The Forests are the Flags was a series of site-specific trail signs placed in Rocky Mountain National Park. I started the project by photographing dozens of aspen trees from RMNP that had people’s initials cut into them. From the photographs, I accumulated the entire alphabet to create a one-of-a-kind font. I arranged the letters to form quotes taken from writers and naturalists who were instrumental in attaining national park status for the land. Repurposing the illegally carved letters to subversively spell out the environmentally-minded messages holds a paradox that poses questions about humans' place in the wild. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1517850985815-KULWNE3ZYR9SNGM9R6YU/2.3+you+feel+that+way+real+strong.JPG Work you feel that way real strong is an immersive installation exploring my religious upbringing by utilizing multiple video projections, sound, and felt scrims that are reminiscent of church banners. The banners are adorned with a Bible verse handwritten by my great-grandfather who was a Pentecostal preacher and then laser cut into the scrim by me. Through a patchwork of original and found footage, the installation attempts to capture some of the universal truths that religion offers without celebrating or criticizing it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1517850850907-XV050OKRKX28WA7MXMGE/Boat+Performance.jpg Work Splitting Water with Wood employs conceptions of faith as a crucial lens to understand its elements; a handcrafted boat as an exploratory apparatus, the labor surrounding it as an act of devotion, and a resulting performance that experiments with ideas about baptism. By challenging presupposed notions of how a boat traditionally functions, I rely on the lively materiality of the object and its environment to capture and extract previously unforeseen possibilities. It considers the do-it-yourself lineage in my family and how that history of fabricating, constructing, and repairing informs me as an artist. Splitting Water with Wood draws on personal stories of my past and reimagines them as new narratives to explore the many facets of my Midwestern roots and provides insight to myself as a maker. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1672631358926-CNE95WPC9STT8O6OQDJ2/log+tools+quilt+web+.jpg Work From curator Arielle Myers: “Matthew Smith’s work similarly serves as a translation of memory to objects, centering around one particular winter in his hometown of Wabash, Indiana. When his father’s job required that he temporarily move away from the family, Smith and his twin brother were tasked with taking on his father’s role of keeping the house warm with their wood-burning stove. Smith’s memory of this task is almost mythological: a rite of passage, a coming-of-age narrative. He compares firemaking to the act of prayer: process-oriented and ritualistic, yet seemingly magical in its attempt to conjure something from nothing through hard work and faith. Smith’s narrative is one that seems intrinsic to a spirit of Americana, especially as it is tied to rural and religious communities. Through actions which are simple yet repetitious, ubiquitous and yet unique, and mundane yet monumental, there is fulfillment to be found. Smith’s work frequently takes the form of a reconstruction of objects from his childhood, and his sculptural objects in The Spirit in The Flame are primarily made from wood, much of which is sourced from the woods of Wabash. By remaking parts of his sculptures of the axe, the wedge, the splitting maul, and the woodpile out of the same wood that kept his family’s home warm all winter, he allows the medium to reinforce the significance of both the material and the process in his narrative. The one exception in materials is a sculpture constructed from a quilt, handmade by Smith from a reference photograph of himself as a ten year-old boy asleep on top of the heating vent, covered in a quilt to trap in the heat. The medium is also the message in this piece: “Home is where the heat is.” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1517851624731-26LBCTPP7NG9P7WUBK1Z/5.2.+the+day+the+boat+flipped+over.JPG Work I have been creating an ongoing series of felt storyboards reminiscent of the ones I grew up with in Sunday School. Rather than telling significant Bible anecdotes, these artworks tell bizarre accounts of faith or childhood stories of fishing. Made from hot glue and cut felt, the storyboards pay homage to a straightforward DIY process and its resulting aesthetic to tell uncommon narratives. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1672641145935-OOGKHC9RGB6YSA9T9WMH/Learning+to+Count+%28West+Fork+Fire%29.jpg Work Learning to Count is an ongoing series of photographs which document large-scale ephemeral installations I create on public lands to draw attention to wildfires and climate change in Colorado. For this series I visit Colorado’s largest burn zones and build a sculptural abacus that states the acreage burned. Learning to Count proposes that the solutions to our current crisis may be as elementary as an archaic counting device, but would demand a visionary mindset to forge that future. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1672673403221-J6NQTOXIUGHUEKY0VGUM/chair_fruitsofourlabor1.JPG Work In the fall of of 2021 I started building conceptual furniture as a part of my artistic practice. These works connect with the places for which they were built as much as how they function. For Well Pump Chair I created an oak chair that honored an idiosyncratic water pump at a farm house. The form of the chair was inspired by the curious construction of the pump on a back porch. It is an ode to DIY construction and the ad hoc way of making that is evident in rural spaces. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1672680955158-NVTUWDZGQ9QJXHXVI2WD/Mineral+Pool+%28Fourpole+Dig%29.jpg Work Four Pole Dig is an ongoing series of sculptures resulting from my physical exploration of “The Bottoms.” The Bottoms is a floodplain near my house where Four Pole Creek empties into the Ohio River. The space has been used as a makeshift dump by local residents for years. During my time there I have picked up old glass and ceramic along with digging clay from the banks of Four Pole. I leave the clay in its original material state with minimal processing. I make a variety of amalgamations that intermix the newly created ceramic objects with the old found glass and ceramic. These experiments combine the natural and manmade in a manifestation of The Bottoms specifically and Appalachia at large. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1672671044383-MDQA3R39XDAWCEGLC8WO/Smith_Matt_5.jpg Work Invasive Species was a social practice project in which I collected litter from Clark Reservation State Park in Jamesville, NY and created durable ceramic vessels from it. The ceramic vessels took the forms of plastic soda bottles, styrofoam cups, and beer cans and were fired with images of the park’s most invasive species; garlic mustard. I partnered with the park on a day where volunteers picked up trash around the park. After picking up trash, individuals could trade a piece of litter for a cup. By the end of the day the wall of cups had been transformed. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1678416335175-BBCVYTJOU02OHD2M88M6/image-asset.jpg Work Lyre Liar is a new series I recently started of digitally fabricated hardwood ‘quilts’ that explore historical quilt-making imagery of Appalachia. In leafing through the pages of a book on West Virginia quilts I came upon a striking Baltimore Album quilt that held at its center an odd image, one that looked to me like an impossible piece of pottery. Impossible because of the way its handles were positioned along with these openings throughout the center of the pot. Upon more research I found out that this ‘impossible pot’ was an ancient instrument called a lyre. This lyre in the quilt was so abstracted and my mind biased towards pottery that this image had fooled me on all accounts. Rhododendron Trophy Handoff is the first in this series and plays with this idea of a ‘lyre pot’, a made-up liminal object ebbing and flowing between being recognizable as any single thing. Like the original quilter abstracting the image to a degree in which I fell short of understanding it for what it is, I continue to break down this image as a pure exercise for my curiosity. I hope this artwork produces the same mystery for the viewer as the original quilt did for me. https://www.mdsmithstudio.com/about daily 0.75 2023-01-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1520277279236-HU6X6EIOUBQ7R76282TN/About+Page+2.jpg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a78788e7131a505f168e90e/1520277072150-HVFSKWOK5A33AOISWFRX/About+Page+2.jpg About https://www.mdsmithstudio.com/smithcv daily 0.75 2023-01-02