The Crow's Nest

Tom Chang
Staff Writer

Artist and activist Matuschka met with students at USF St. Petersburg on Oct. 6 in Davis 103. She spoke about her career as an artist, a model and a pioneering activist for breast cancer awareness. During her visit, she also spoke to various classes in addition to her lecture.

Matuschka expressed a message of inspiration, originality and changing the negative to something positive.

“Particularly in art, you can turn an adverse situation into a position or a constructive work that can help benefit others,” Matuschka said.

Her best-known work is the 1993 award-winning cover picture of the New York Times Magazine where she first brought major attention to breast cancer.

“I think it’s great that we have someone like Matuschka and her body of work as an artist coming to our campus,” said Lottie Watts, a graduate student in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies. “I think you can’t look at the [NY Times] picture without stopping and thinking about all the tragedies that are still happening.”

Matuschka said her work is an ongoing process dependant on what is going on with her life.

“To heal myself, or recuperate or recover from whatever experience I’m going through, I need to turn it into a work of art,” Matuschka said. “So if something is inspiring me, I’ll spend a year to focus on a theme that I might develop as a result of a real life experience.”

She started her career when she was 16 years old and had her first show at 18. The themes of her earlier work were primarily of tragedy and death from her life experiences. She moved on to abstract before proceeding to political.

“I moved back more towards abstract and peaceful work that I do for art’s sake unless it was political,” Matuschka said. “It is a two-fold project, because it’s very hard to get political work out. The work I’m known for is of an activist nature, but there is no room for activist artwork these days.”

Despite a lack of demand for her artwork, she stays busy writing and lecturing.

“Here I do think there might be some hope; there is somebody in the classroom who might benefit from hearing my story,” Matuschka said. “But I came from a very different time in the world. I do not come from a virtual world. I was lucky in a sense but now I call it unlucky. Prior to the age of computers, you had to interact with people. I was brought up in a time where you had to interface and form working relationships. I hope that maybe young people would find balance between doing things on and away from the computer. I find myself more addicted to the computer now.”

Matuschka said the accessibility of the web has benefits and detriments.

“You can get access to more stuff. I can look at stuff from places like China, which isn’t something I could really do 30 years ago, but I’m not so sure that the spirit is there anymore,” Matuschka said. “There were movements where artists got together, like the Dada movement or the surreal movement. People are now particular about themselves and there isn’t a movement.”

Her next project is tribute to her mentor, Don Snyder, who passed away in September. “He was the most important inspiration in my life,” Matuschka said. “I’m looking to do a retrospective of his work and my work. I bought some of his work after he died. I’m going to do a memorial, a tribute to my teacher.”

Matuschka is currently promoting a show to complement her book, “Bagit!,” which was released last year.