Text by Joseph M. Schuster

Matthew Imperiale started as a theater major at the University of West Virginia, “but it turned out that I was too introverted to act.” Then he took a drawing course. “That was it. I found how I wanted to spend my life.” He left college before graduating because friends in the Big Apple told him about a large, inexpensive studio in Greenwich Village that was too good to pass up. “I had a few credits to go, but my art teachers urged me to go to New York, because, well, it was New York.” Years later, he went back and got his degree.



When Matthew begins a new piece, he works instinctively. “I don’t plan anything. I just jump in.” He began “System No. 2,” (a), with an old bookshelf, a piece of a painters’ palette, a finial from an antique lamp, and a window screen. “It just evolved into something like a mechanical device.”

“Stay true to the aspects of art that interest you personally,” Matthew says. “If you accept commissions, don’t accept any type of project that you don’t want to do, because those are the kinds of projects you’ll end up being asked to do again.” (b) Matthew often uses scraps of linoleum in his work. A remnant from a children’s playroom became the centerpiece of “Puss in Boots Geomyth.”

He began working with found materials because, when he moved to New York, he couldn’t afford anything other than what he found walking around the city. Three decades later, he uses them by choice rather than necessity. “There’s an indescribable aesthetic quality to something that someone else decided was worthless but that still has usefulness.” The materials also add an autobiographical dimension to his work, because each object reminds him of the circumstances in which he found it. “I don’t just go out with the intention of looking for materials, but use things I find when I’m on my way someplace. I’ve been late for appointments because I’ll come across something I need to take home.”

Matthew prefers not to explain his work in detail. “A friend had one of my pieces in his apartment, and once an electrician came to do some work. After he finished, my friend went to get his checkbook and when he came back, the guy was standing in front of my work. ‘What the heck is this?’ he said. I consider his curiosity the greatest compliment I could get.”