January 22, 2011
The Coleman Center for the Arts is pleased to welcome artist Matthew Mazzotta on his first visit to York. Please join us at the Coleman Center for food, fun, and creative conversation on Saturday, January 22nd from 10 to 11 am.
While exploring his work through and with the community, Mazzotta will be assembling an outdoor living room from found and lent objects. The artist is inviting community members to lend him items for his outdoor seating area. On Saturday, January 22nd at 10 am the public is invited to join Mazotta in the outdoor lounge for tea and conversation.
Mazzotta’s work “evolves from an interest in exploring the relationship between people and their environments, as well as between each other.” His exploratory project at the Coleman Center is an extension of several of Mazzotta’s previous projects including “Steeped in Exploration” in which residents from the rural area Smalle Ee, Netherlands made and drank tea with the artist. Mazzotta built a seating structure and water heating element powered by a methane digester, which transformed manure from local farms into energy to heat water for tea. Instead of using commercial tea, participants worked with the artist to gather plants from the surrounding area. A “tea house without tea,” the work catalyzed community knowledge, harvested sustainable resources, and transformed untapped sources of energy for creative production.
Mazzotta’s initial work at the Coleman Center will build a social space, physically comprised of objects from residents’ homes, and socially constructed through the artists week long quest to meet and get to know community members. For more information or to participate please contact the Coleman Center for the Arts, 205-392-2005, colemancenter@gmail.com.
This project is made possible by support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and the generous contributions of our individual supporters.
About the Artist
Mazzotta holds a B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago and a Masters of Science in Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has completed residencies at Peer Group: Portable Artist in Residency in Smalle Ee, Netherlands and at Gyeonggi Creation Center in Ansan, Gyeonggi Korea. His work has been shown nationally and internationally and his recent “The Park Spark Project” was widely discussed including on NPR, CNN, and the BBC.