Downtown Tucsonan - February 2008 - (Page 18)

Arts Inside the Studio by Diane Daly Artist: Mat Bevel Media: Performance art and Kinetic sculpture Studio Location: Mat Bevel Institute, 530 n. stone here on Earth is Mat Bevel? He vanished so completely the last few years that I’d begun to imagine him touring the world. Picture his inflatable Ironic Lung shuffling along between bikinis during carnival in Rio. Imagine his writings on “morpholosophy” baffling the government censors in china. see his image-spawning miniature yellow-skulled drum toys at markets in Mexico. what I’ve most enjoyed imagining, however, is Mat Bevel making art happen like he used to in tucson. so it’s lucky for me that as of 2008 he’s in all of these worldwide locales, in a manner of speaking. Mat Bevel has dedicated his rented warehouse and his soul to Bevelvision, the goal of which is to broadcast Bevel’s entire oeuvre on the Internet from the console of his tucson studio. a few years ago, Bevel was at once the darling and the peculiar uncle of tucson’s downtown arts scene. He built kinetic found-object sculptures, and creaked them around as characters onstage while he recited pieces of his manifesto, which consisted mostly of puns. Bevel starred alone in all his own shows, painting his bald head or wearing mechanized headgear to play various characters, and he did it all in the windowless warehouse he called home, the Mat Bevel Institute. then, around 2006, like one of his machines Mat Bevel and his Institute seemed to just switch off. the Institute closed its doors to performances, and when it did, Mat Bevel disappeared. “the key to art is demonstrating flow, universal flow, but I couldn’t flow here anymore,” he explained from the warehouse one day last month. Every seasonal show required hours of sculpture rearrangement and lighting, only to be presented to the same small audience that had seen him last season. He couldn’t light the sculptures and himself adequately at the same time during shows. Most limiting, his adot-owned warehouse badly needed renovation to welcome new audiences, but long-term improvement seemed futile. the Mat Bevel institute, like other area warehouses, has been dangling over the chopping block in the downtown Links highway expansion plans for years now. Bevel had to keep working. the way he sees it, art—like religion—puts him in “the Business of Inspiration,” and it’s an essential ingredient he is charged with introducing into many people’s lives. “where I grew up, in alliance, ohio,” he told me, “there was no way to get what I needed. You gave up what you loved to work.” He got out of alliance, however, and from then on he has been passionately convinced that his mission is to “bring the beauty” to all who need it. so when only the same small audience came to see his shows each time he performed, he felt it was time to shift his focus to the rest of the world, via the internet. Bevel no longer lives at the Institute, but he and his girlfriend shauna Zimmerman were bundled in winter coats and hats to give me a tour of the place recently, now that it’s outfitted for Bevelvision. He opened the red metal door and we stepped w 18 downtown tucsonan.february.08 http://www.vikaspawagroup.net http://www.vikaspawagroup.net http://www.downtowntucson.com/lunchtime_music http://www.downtowntucson.com/lunchtime_music

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Downtown Tucsonan - February 2008

Downtown Tucsonan - February 2008 Contents From the Editor Downtown Lowdown Vital Signs Downtown Restaurants & Cafes Downtown Live Arts Galleries Performances Film Events Museums Historic Downtown Downtown Travelogue Billboard Classifieds

Downtown Tucsonan - February 2008

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