I rounded the corner of the PAC as he was walking out of the studio.
“Wow, perfect timing,” he said.
We walked together to one of the outdoor tables. He sat, propped right foot on left knee, and set his black sketchbook down on the table. The tattoo on his left arm was visible underneath the rolled-up sleeve of his dark grey flannel. He smiled, I asked one question, and really the next hour was just us talking. It’s easy to talk about something you’re passionate about, and Matthew Watkins is beautifully passionate.
As he flipped through his sketchbook, offered quotes from his favorite artists and told me about what inspires him, I watched as he put both feet on the ground and leaned forward in excitement. Then he moved to the seat next to me and showed me what was in the sacred pages of the black book. He showed me photos of art that is created in open space, in any space. Because in space there’s potential, freedom, possibilities, beyond the construct of a canvas or a piece of paper or a computer.
“I don’t want anything else but the space,” he said.
Before I had spoken a word to Matthew Watkins, I remember driving past him making bricks in the heat at the end of last semester. I remember hearing someone offer a snarky remark about some art major building something in the yard between Pleasant Plains and Providence Hall. I knew it was him though, and honestly, I was excited to see what it might be. I was excited that it was there in the open space of field and sky for anyone to see. I’d look over anytime I was driving or walking by to notice how far he’d progressed. Just thinking about it now makes me giddy. Just the knowing that someone out there is creating, is feeding their body and soul by creating with their whole being, is enough to energize me. Even just from my momentary drive-bys, I felt like I got to see the beginnings of a creation and then watch it move into the essence of what the artist is all about. It was magical.
And then I got to hear about the process from the actual artist, which added to the magic. There’s something truly remarkable about humanizing a work of art, putting a face to the creation, a face to the paper, canvas, or in this instance, bricks.
It was a sanctuary. That’s what he called it anyways.
“The piece was over 1600 bricks made out of raw earth, and then I built a space out of it,” he said. “I left it for a couple of weeks to let the weather get to it. I wanted it to collapse. All the bricks stayed together, dissolved, but were still there.”
“I’ve never been more satisfied with a piece. It was the full realization of what I wanted to do as an artist.”
He then shared that the challenge is figuring out how to bring his pieces indoors without losing their power. He said he wants to work on pieces that are larger than the individual because “the human scale is the measure of art.”
Recently, he was able to bring his bricks indoors by creating a piece inside of Barefoots Joe. When you walked in the front doors of the coffee shop, there was his art, impossible to ignore, but I’m not sure if he’s created something that is possible to ignore. The bricks were formed in a square on the ground. The center of the square was a plain, clay brick, colored differently than the surrounding red-tinted bricks. He said when someone figured out that they could walk on the bricks, they stood in the middle and said, “I feel like the center of attention.”
Watkins broke into a huge smile. He explained that this is what he wanted. “Making the viewer aware of themselves by moving them beyond themselves,” he said.
That one brick moved someone beyond the comfortable space, into the creative space, into the center of attention. By standing in the center of his artwork, they were doing more than looking at art, they were becoming part of his art.
Watkins then went on to explain that art’s purpose does not have to be utilitarian. He described how a canvas, painted just one color, is enough to be art. The purpose of the piece is not to only be useful or practical to your being, which is what we’re often told art should be. Instead, the piece is simply to get the viewer to see color, to just see that one color, and experience it.
“It’s about beauty,” he said. “If beauty didn’t matter, then why would they make the temple so elaborate? Why do we care so much about flowers when the only purpose they serve is to be beautiful? Why would you want to limit art to representation?”
“Before we did anything, we expressed ourselves,” he went on to say. “No matter what situation people are in, they’re going to create in some kind of fashion.”
“Art is visual communication on a spiritual level. I’m not talking to you but I’m communicating with you, if you’re willing to listen, ya know? I think the creative act is, the soul human way to communicate beyond yourself, beyond words, beyond the physical; because that’s what really makes us different than animals, the soul. I think all creative acts stem from the soul.”
Photo Courtesy of Campbell Padgett
