Kim Matthews’ life changed, and her career as a sculptor began, after learning Transcendental Meditation at 33 years old. A return to art studies resulted in work exploring the development of consciousness. The use of repetition, “handmade geometry,” and a limited color palette characterize Matthews’ post-minimalist sculptures.
Watch this video interview with Matthews by Minnesota Original:
our culture is so
over stimulated and so disconnected
from self and from nature it’s why
we have problems with addiction and
attention deficit disorder and a need
for constant entertainment and
distraction and all of that
if there’s anything that i want people
to take away from my work
it’s just silence
i learned transcendental meditation when
i was 33
and it really changed my life i had not
been making
any kind of art at all and i realized
after a few months that i really wanted
a way to
understand how my consciousness was
evolving i wanted a language
like a feedback loop because i could
feel that these
major transformations in myself
how i saw myself in the world how i saw
the world
and i wanted a way to understand that to
kind of mirror that and
look at it so i went back to the
university of minnesota
and studied printmaking and from there
got involved in paper making and from
there got involved in sculpture
i’ve always loved barnacles they were
just such an integral part of my
childhood because
we would go to the main coast every
summer and i would
run around barefoot and get my feet cut
up on them
and they’re just interesting little
animals and i just thought they’re
a great shape what’s really great to me
about nature is that you see these
patterns
over and over and over again you know
fractal geometry i think is
really exciting this is the hot hot
hot melt glue gun this is the one where
i burn myself
regularly i like the
repetitive activity of making these 2
500 little modules
because that in itself is a very
meditative
activity and i hope that the energy that
i feel
when i’m working on my pieces is
actually perceptible
at a glance there are 2500 of these
little cone shapes
and you can see they’re alike but then
when you look at them closely you see
they’re all very different
that reflects every living creature
i think we’re ultimately all connected
all part of each other all part of this
larger thing that’s really more
alike than different and yet there’s
this incredible
diversity that we have on this planet
art is just it’s just so much more than
what most people
really think it is it’s just a way to
examine your entire universe really
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the state arts and cultural heritage
fund
and the citizens of minnesota
