Art as Activism: Colin Matthes
Biography
Colin Matthes is an interdisciplinary artist (working in installation, illustration, drawing, and arts advocacy). He received his BFA at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater where he focused on ceramics and painting. At Whitewater he gained an appreciation of craftsmanship and technique. For his graduate studies, he received a MFA at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) focusing on installation, video, and illustration. In graduate school he concentrated on synthesizing his artistic experiences with his political interests to create personally relevant and meaningful work.
The primary choice of visual communication has been installation art. These installations invite the viewer into cramped spaces where they find themselves in situations commonly reserved for those near the bottom of our culture's social totem pole. Recent projects include, "#18-A Leftover From the Dairy Industry" (an autobiographical work about his interactions with a calf, #18, where the viewer enters a veal crate the size of those found on a factory farms to view video of #18), and "Animals and Workers" (a project inviting the viewer to explore the interactions and similarities between animals and workers in a slaughterhouse environment). This work challenges the viewer while simultaneously encouraging their interpretation.
As an illustrator, Colin has produced work for All the Days After: Critical Voices in Poetry and Artwork (Detroit, MI), Faesthetic (Toledo, OH), Friction Magazine, SubTerrain Magazine (Vancouver, B.C. Canada), Swinj Art (Salt Lake City, UT), Maisonneuve (Montreal, QC Canada) and CD covers as well as self-publishing his own work in the booklet/zine Ideas In Pictures (MI). Ideas in Pictures issues are collections of drawings and text that are integrated into his installations in concept and placement. This zine is also exhibited (Sequence Show, Kansas City, MO) and distributed (ideasinpictures.org and www.bpdistro.tk) as a stand-alone art object.
As an organizer and collaborator, Colin was a collective member and co-founder of RAD.ART, an ongoing series of art events in Ann Arbor, MI. Past RAD.ART events include lectures by Sue Coe (N.Y.C.), Alfredo Jaar (N.Y.C.), Seth Tobocman (N.Y.C.), David Rees (N.Y.C.), The Beehive Design Collective (Maine), and the traveling art show "Drawing Resistance." He also organized art events with The School of Natural Resources and the Environment, including "Snow Screen 2002," a temporary, site-specific collaborative artwork on the grounds in front of The University of Michigan Museum of Art.