The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond, to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. A listing in the OAR does not confer an endorsement, approval, or verification by the Ohio Arts Council.
For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.
2024 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Matthew Burgy
Kinetic Sculptor, Painter, PrintmakerBio
Matthew Burgy is a kinetic sculptor, painter, and art educator born in Kettering, Ohio in 1982. At Wright State University he earned both his BFA, specializing in sculpture and printmaking as well as his Master’s in Education, specializing in art education.
Currently Matthew is living in Waynesville, Ohio and is working full time as a Museum Educator for the Dayton Art Institute. At the DAI, Matthew creates and teaches studio workshops as well as mentoring college fine arts students in museum exhibition and fine art studio practices. Previously Matthew was an adjunct professor in the University of Dayton’s Fine Art Department where he taught studio art education practices.
Since his start as a professional artist in 2005, Matthew has gained an extensive list of professional exhibitions in numerous venues and museums including both the Dayton Art Institute and the Ohio Craft Museum in Columbus, Ohio. He has also completed several private commissions and been awarded several times for his work.
Although Matthew’s main focus is primarily on kinetic sculpture, he also works in numerous other mediums including painting, drawing, and jewelry. All his works are heavily inspired from his close studies of nature, as well as his fascination with science, science fiction, and the cosmos. The artworks he creates are often symbolic manifestations of spiritual thoughts, explorations of simple scientific principles, or emotive expressions of significant events that have occurred throughout his life’s journey.
Artist Statement
My sculptural work is a carefully balanced blend of physics, math, intuition, and experimentation. Many of my materials have been repurposed from their former industrial uses–an act which I compare to a spiritual rebirth giving new life, purpose, and meaning to a former way of living. I delicately compose natural, scientific, and spiritual observations into metaphorical undertones of meaning. By playing with the forces of nature, specifically those of gravity and wind, it is my hopes to bring the unseen world into the viewers attention and awaken their eyes to new realms of sight, knowledge, and feeling about the world around them. My kinetic work in particular lends itself to arrest ones thoughts and provides a moment of quiet observation and contemplation to simply watch as the pieces gently dance through the air. I hope these moments find you peace and I invite you to embrace this time to reflect, be still, and slowly breathe in the air which provides life both to you and this work. Our world is fast paced and we, just like my sculptures, are always on the move. I delight in the irony that my moving sculptures are intended to help us all be still, if only for a moment. Sometimes a moment is all we need to change our world.
As part of my inspiration for my kinetic sculptures, I will immerse myself in nature to photograph, draw, and paint landscapes, especially trees, to better understand the relationship between something that is stationary, yet also has many moving parts. For example, the base of a tree versus its fluttering leaves or the ever-evolving shapes of clouds in the wind as these massive objects float effortlessly overhead. I also closely study the structures and shapes of natural objects and abstract them for use in my work–leaves, fish fins, feathers, butterfly and birds wings in particular are a great source of inspiration for the fins and structural compositions of my sculptures. These observations also lend themselves to create abstract and non-objective paintings in which I explore color and shape relationships to yield emotive and spiritual expressions. When the day turns to night, I also watch the movements and phases of the moon change as it slowly travels among the stars. I am truly fascinated by the planets and other celestial objects for us to view each night. Staring into the night sky gives me pause to ponder and admire the presence of realms of existence truly beyond our understanding. I have found that through very close observation of nature, from everything to the shape of individual leaves to order of the stars in galaxies, that the more we seek, the more we will find the universal and elemental brushstrokes of Creation. For this reason, I take great joy in exploring and expressing these creative connections across many mediums as it only helps to further and deeper my understanding of both of my own workmanship and of myself in relation to the world around me.
