Matthew Cummings is an artist producing contemporary artwork about the way we see the world around us and more specifically, how we fabricate systems to understand this world. The systems that Matthew chooses to deal with range from topographical maps that visually represent a change in elevation to the abstractions produced by electron microscopes of the infinitesimally small. Since 2003, Matthew has been exhibiting his glass sculptures throughout the United States and featured in several magazines including the international publication, Glass Quarterly. He graduated from Centre College in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts in Glass and Painting, under the tutelage of Stephen Rolfe Powell. After college, Matthew traveled throughout the country to study firsthand with expert glassblowers in order to master his craft. In 2009 he embarked upon a new aesthetic journey spurred by the On Perception Series. This recent work is realized through glass sculptures, video and glass installations, paintings, and drawings. Matthew earned the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Illinois State University in 2011. Currently, he maintains a sculpture studio in Louisville, KY where he produces sculpture and painting about the fragility of perception.
View Matthew’s art on his website!
The On Perception series are novellas for how we see and what a line or lines moving through space can mean. Since the beginning of philosophy, we have always used visual analogies to describe concepts and theories of knowledge…think Plato’s Cave and the Cartesian Theater. Since we can never actually see these things, I look to fields of study that visualize the unseen and push the boundaries of our concept of the world, such as Particle Physics, Quantum Physics, Astronomy, and Microscopy. The aesthetics of each field of study influences the visuals of my abstractions and allow the work to become metaphors for how we ‘see’ the unobservable.
-Matthew Cummings