As a young, broke art school student, Matthew Mazzotta and his friends would cruise Chicago’s inner-city alleys, searching for discarded furniture to toss in the back of his van. “Everything I built at that point was from garbage—that was the philosophy," recalls the public artist, then earning his BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
They hauled their finds to nearby Grant Park, arranging lumpy chairs, plastic plants, and dusty VCR players into makeshift, open-air living rooms. There, they hung out, talked, played guitar, and took pictures. “None of us had any money, so what do you do? We were just a bunch of art students on an adventure,” says Matthew.
Over a decade later, Matthew resurrected this DIY experiment after being invited to collaborate on a public project in York, Alabama. By then, he was a working artist with a Master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT, already experienced at the intersection of visual art, technology, city planning, and community organization. He had become nationally known for “Spark Park,” a methane digester that turned dog waste into renewable energy for the city of Cambridge, Mass. The community in York, however, required a different approach.
Seeking to build something the town truly needed, Matthew wondered, “What if we made an outdoor living room and had a conversation in the middle of the street?” Their informal conversations inspired “Open House,” a once-blighted downtown property transformed into a small house whose walls and roof fold down into a publicly owned open-air theater.
These days, Matthew’s projects all begin the same way: a community, a collection of chairs, and a conversation about public space and collective identity. His project, “Cloud House,” is featured in our summer exhibition, 250: A Celebration of Public Art in the U.S.
In Today’s Q+Art Interview…
Matthew Mazzotta unpacks his “outdoor living room” research methodology, explains why pink is punk, and considers the inherently political nature of public art.
Can you tell me about your ‘outdoor living room’ methodology? It's almost like you're going into these different communities and acting like an ethnographer.
Matthew Mazzotta: That is probably the most interesting part of the work: that I go with the blank notebook. I'm always like, “Okay, what's this town? What's this city about?” And people expect that out of me. They want to teach you everything. I'm down for it. Teach me everything. Show me everything. Let’s talk to the mayor, let’s talk to the drug dealer, let’s talk to the community activist, let’s talk to the person who doesn’t care about anything. I keep taking notes until I find that one thing we can agree upon.
I get the idea that you’re tackling the civic disengagement that's been unfolding in this country since the ’70s.
MM: I always thought art was activism. I didn't know it wasn’t until one of my professors said, “Why does all your work need to mean something? Why can't it just be a bunch of stripes on a wall? You're saying something that's not related to art.” It made me so disappointed. I'm like, really? Then what are we doing? I guess activism was always the reason why I did the art. For me, it's all one big strategy. How do you get a person that doesn't care about something to walk into a conversation or into a dialogue? I use artistic sensibilities, or the privileges art gives us, in terms of capturing someone's attention.
There's something incredibly disingenuous about calling art not political. What you see in museums and who gets remembered—is that not political?
MM: When I say public space is political, it just means that if our downtowns are littered with commercial venues, like a grocery store, a gas station, or a post office, or just sidewalks, only a certain kind of dialogue can happen. However, if you open up these new public spaces and imbue them with creativity, people can come together, have an experience, and start to chat about the town.
If we don't create spaces where people can be open and free, and everything's just transactional, the conversations in that community will be different than if you do have these open spaces. When you have these public artworks that are more thought-provoking, I find that people are more willing to be “wowed” and open to each other.
Your style is very distinct. I'm seeing a lot of pink in the more recent works.
MM: I was in San Diego recently because I just finished a piece called “Rise.” It’s based on the purple striped jellyfish, but it has a lot of pink. One person said, “Your work has a lot of pink in it—why?” I’d never thought about it before. Why do I like pink? What’s my earliest memory of it? When I was a young boy, we walked into a store for shoes, and I wanted the salmon color. My mom was thinking I’d get bullied, but told me to get them if I wanted them. So I got them, and everybody at school bullied me. But I remember, even back then, I could see it was a cool color. It’s kind of forever.
It's kind of punk.
MM: That's what I saw. I did see it more as punk because I got into skateboarding early, and there you could flaunt all the colors. I have been paying attention to pink. Pink is hot right now, which is interesting. I don't watch sports, but the amount of basketball players that have pink shoes…it’s male basketball players, really. How is it possible right now that we have this color coming up? Because it could be seen as a pejorative color: Boys don't wear this, men don't wear this. Now it just feels like that is completely not the case. It's a very attractive color.
Who are three other public artists you’d recommend to our readers?
MM: Ghana Think Tank. You know who else is good? Marisa Jahn. Studio Rev is her thing. I like more socially engaged work. Both Ghana Think Tank and Marissa are in that vein. You know who's great? Mel Chin. I met him at a residency, and he’s the coolest guy.
Matthew Mazzotta: Website | Instagram
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All images published with permission of Matthew Mazzotta; featured artwork: “Open House.”