Gabriel Velazquez Zazueta

During my life I have been lucky to meet with brilliant minds and the kindness souls and from these encounters I know my own persona has shape and learn.

But when you are extremely blessed to have a mentor that teaches you daily with his quiet accions over a course of a decade, well that amigos is what I will miss the most of Matt.

I will practice my clumpism and make part of the universe of lessons you left in my heart

Happy swimming Papa Matt, until we see again. Perhaps you will adopt dia de los muertos and visit us and have a mezcal conmigo

3

Oct 26, 2020

Jane Grimes

Matt has such a wonderful impact on our whole family. We were lucky enough to be neighbors just one block over the border from Ridgewood in Bushwick for about eight years. The joy he and Jude brought to each of us is impossible to express. Even though we are so physically far away, his presence is alive with us all the time. The Better than the Super Bowl party is alive in our conversation regularly. Our decadent surf and turf New Year's Eve dinners are alive every late December as we try to recreate those perfect moments wherever we are living. And, of course, the paper mache pachycephalosaurus head he constructed with Henry is alive in our house every day right along with the plaster casts of the kids' fists made in the gog for monster sculptures. Our gratitude for the utter joy of knowing Matt is boundless.

8

Oct 26, 2020

Jessica Nissen

Matt in Action... 🌷xojess

9

Oct 26, 2020

Carol Diehl

Jude, I love you so much! Too full of memories...going back to riding around the cornfields listening to blues in that big convertible when you and Matt were still in Iowa. One of my big regrets in having left the city is not seeing you as much as I would have wanted...looking forward to reconnecting when the time is right. Know you always have a home in the Berkshires!

Oct 25, 2020

Keenan Bennett

I was Matt's student at Penn. Before I officially began at the program, when Matt and I met the first or second time, I asked him in a awkward joking sort of way if the program would take us student caterpillars and wrap us in academia cocoons for us to emerge butterflies. He responded, “The hope is that you all come in as caterpillars, yes, but that you leave as caterpillars, too. Maybe just different caterpillars than when you started.” He chuckled and continued, “Aren’t we all just caterpillars?”

Oct 25, 2020

Kate Teale

So sad today. I think we'd all come to believe Matt might cheat death, having done such a stellar job of it for the last eight years. I love both Matt and Jude - and learned such a lot from curating my first show with Matt - "Twin Twin - Artists' Edition" in which he invited 63 artist to show in one tiny room - that expanded like a universe to accommodate them. His curatorial mantra "trust artists" has stayed with me, as have his kindness, intellect, humor and Clumpism.

3

Oct 25, 2020

John Berens

Matt with a cake in September 2014 at the Pierogi Anniversary Show

Oct 25, 2020

Bill Schuck

Matt, you were the quintessential example of an iconoclast, smart in the most individual way, you reinvented what we think of as an artist, a scholar and a public personality. When Matt started the Endless Broken Time project with Tim it seemed like the stories and anecdotes would just keep flowing like a fountain from Matt's mind. Well the stories did and they will continue to float about in our hearts and minds. You'll be so missed Matt because there's no one else like you.

Bill Schuck

Oct 31, 2020