Matt made art the way he lived: In perpetual motion.
His collection of dashed-off helicopter paintings with whipping blades, his friezes choked with narrative action (no languid goddesses lounging in there), even the huge steel sculpture he crafted with Enis Sefersah looked like it plummeted from outer space and was still moving (in its stasis!), with reflections dancing on several planes of shiny surface. Also see "Mega Set," his Rube Goldbergian dream drum kit, sketched as an imaginative kid — you'd have to be one explosive drummer.
While his art is about motion, it is also about permanence. Again, the helicopters, the friezes that referenced early architecture, the metal meteor and the drum kit, each representations of that which cannot so easily be destroyed. His rural Midwestern landscapes painted on saw blades are also about a way of living that has endured despite civilization's "progress."
Like his art, Matt was a real force to be reckoned with, who could not be contained or restrained. He's probably still moving, swirling around and inside all of us. It's just that without him to blaze the trail, turning around to tell us to hurry the hell up, we'll have to focus harder to find our way.
