Thanks for visiting. My name is Matt Ballou. I teach at the University of Missouri’s School of Visual Studies, where I’ve been since 2007. At this site you can see a range of my visual and written work.
Who I Am
I am an artist, teacher, writer, and dad who lives in Mid Missouri. This blog, which I began in 2009, records my art practice, as well as words and images that I use to reflect on my experiences in this life. I’m trying to learn how to see and dream well.
Please browse the various areas in the menu above for more about me. In particular, my adventures in China and at Ox-bow have been integral to who I have become. Additionally, my heart attack was a watershed event that produced radical changes in my art and life.
Context
I have shown my artwork in exhibitions across the US, from Illinois, Kansas, and Massachusetts to New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, and Washington. I have developed and curated exhibitions in Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, and Nebraska. My areas of research include:
Comparing and contrasting Eastern and Western Mandala forms
Investigating how natively digital art practices interact with physical materials
Developing pedagogical uses of technology and online learning environments
Using CNC routers, laser engravers, and various drawing robots in the development of artworks
Writing
My writing has been a key aspect of my practice for over twenty years. Publication highlights include a cover feature on the work of Odd Nerdrum in Image Journal, a profile on painter Joey Borovicka in The New Territory, and an extensive review of Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park Retrospective for the Chicago-based publication neotericART. In the last few years I completed invited texts for The MU Museum of Art and Archaeology, SEEN Journal, and Oxford University Press (Grove Art). See my Bio and CV for more. Several of my personal favorites are linked here.
Current Art
I have had several areas of art-making going on simultaneously over the last decade or so:
Over the last five or six years, I’ve been involved with a project by an artist and collector named Jim Kasper. In January 2026, that project will come to fruition with the publication of a new book featuring the work of many excellent painters and drafts-persons. These artists are drawn from a range of generations, backgrounds, and faith traditions, but they were commissioned by Jim to build a current vision of artworks that take on the complex themes and histories that form the bible.
Two incredible essays – as well as writings by the artists themselves – help contextualize the works and elucidate the ways these artists add their current voices to ancient conversations.
Also, as part of the upcoming initial dual-site exhibition in Columbia, MO (more info on that when it’s ready), I am offering prints of 5 of my works in the Kasper Collection. I hope you’ll click below and check them out – it’s always good to support artists instead of billionaires, especially in times such as the ones in which we’re living.
My contributions to the Collection are varied. I was glad that Jim allowed me to pursue more straightforward “traditional” painting, but also to work in relief carving and enigmatic, abstract imagery. With the five images above, I was inspired by everything from Correggio’s Jupiter and Io to the physical stylization in the mythology-based paintings of Kyle Staver. I wanted the works to embrace their illustrative side, with strong visual dynamics, weird bodies to match weird activities, and intense colors.
When I was young – perhaps five years old – I caught on to the notion that you could call in to the radio station and request songs. I enjoyed listening to the oldies stations and wondering what song might come up next. This was in the era of Casey Kasem and the power of the Billboard Top 100, and music was a little more of a communal cultural situation.
In any case, I was a radio person back then and I liked the idea that you could influence what was going to be played. One day at the age of 8 or so I decided that I wanted to call in to request the Gordon Lightfoot song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I got the number. I (kind of) worked out what I was going to say. But when I got on the air to make the request, I made a fundamental mistake.
You have to understand that my father had a large record collection, and I knew about a lot of different music from my older siblings, so I had heard a lot of names. It was an easy mistake for a kid to make, damn it! When the DJ asked me what I wanted to hear, I was a little flustered and blurted out:
“Can you please play The Wreck of the Ella Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot?!”
This faux-pas got quite a laugh, and not only from the DJ, but also from my family. In the aftermath of this flub I can state I have known the difference between the Edmund Fitzgerald and the great singer Ella Fitzgerald since that very day.
In all seriousness, though, given that I was so interested in the song it was only natural that not so many years later I would start reading books and articles about the events surrounding this notorious loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Gordon Lightfoot was one of the first singer-songwriters who captured and fired my imagination. He (among some others) caused me to think about time and experience in a different way; as something within me and happening alongside me, not just random stuff apart from my life. Perhaps it’s a testament to the very idea of songwriting and musicianship as artforms. For me, Lightfoot embodied that troubadour tradition. These artists sing the tales of history, document it in personal ways, and help shape a democratic view of history itself.
Of course, everyone knows most famously Bob Dylan as one of these history-singers. But there were many others. I would include people like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Billie Holiday, Utah Phillips, and Natalie Merchant amongst that group. So many… From Woodie Guthrie and Townes Van Zandt to Tracy Chapman and Ani DiFranco and P.J. Harvey. It’s such a rich – and necessary – tradition.
I find it fitting that my interest in the event of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and learning about the history surrounding it – not to mention becoming curious about the whole Great Lakes region – is all connected to the art of singing out moments of collective experience. This, like so many other things, I owe to art and artists. This is the richness of life: Not in things, but in awareness. Not in owning, but in being.
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald as seen from the Ambassador Bridge in 1965. Detroit Historical Society
Today is the 50th anniversary of that ship sinking on Lake Superior. There are many interesting articles currently available from the days and weeks leading up to today (including this one from the Smithsonian and this one from Popular Science). So read about the ship. Read about the song, and listen to it (here’s the first version, but I’ve always been partial to the 1988 re-recording Lightfoot made – it’s a tad longer and has a slight mood adjustment that feels symbolic and mystical to me).
Then take at least 29 seconds – one “for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald” – and may those moments of silent remembrance of them cause you to consider what human commerce, ingenuity, and hubris can do in the face of Nature’s power.
I think back to this show fondly because Jen is awesome and I like having exhibitions with former students (and have done so a number of times, with Jane, Jacob, and most recently with Simon). I took a bunch of images during the installation and recorded some audio of us talking about the work. After listening to it a couple months ago I decided I wanted to celebrate our little show and the work we made there.
I was making my An Ensign for Miyoko Ito series, and experimenting with drawing robots – at the time very cheap ones that couldn’t make very large pieces. I was taking cues from Ito’s works and, as a response to that, Jen decided to use my artworks as the basis for her pieces. Using my work to create tessellated fields of colorful geometry printed on fabric, she then sewed cutting patterns onto them. The notion of a interference pattern felt particularly resonant to the work we both made for the show. This layering of influences and predilections still feels rich to me, and I wanted to share them with everyone again. Thanks so much for doing this show with me, Jen! Though her MFA was in a Fibers focus, these days she does a lot of dynamic photography, mostly in black and white. Check it out here!
Below you can see some images from our installation session and my statement for the show, as well as see more work and hear us talk about it in the video here:
Statement for BALLOU/BENNETT: INTERFERENCE PATTERN
In my recent body of work, titled An Ensign for Miyoko Ito, I seek out the compacted and the overdrawn; the enclosed and the layered; the transformed and the solidified. I look for shapes, colors, and spaces that go far beyond a simple tension between figuration and abstraction, trying instead to suggest a layered arena of observational and haptic information.
Miyoko Ito (Japanese-American, 1918-1983) – whose work has been a key influence on me over the last 20 years – was able to activate subtle surfaces with the illusion of space and an evocative sense of palpability. This is what I’m investigating: the experience of perception apart from particular, representational depiction. In my exploration, questions arise: Does flat form appear to move away from my angle of view? Will color resolve into both static surface and suggested movement? Can space and color align to reinforce both static structure and an expression of time? Might the poetics of silent, unmoving images actually produce phenomena akin to those found in dreams, memories, ecstatic sensations, and atemporal musings?
By pairing my work with Jen’s extrapolations from that work, I hope to suggest the multiplicity of information that may be gathered from surface, color, and texture. She perceives something of Miyoko Ito through my translations. Beyond this, Jen’s artworks add other layers – of visual logic, of aesthetic influences, and of categories of understanding. In this modest exhibition, Jen and I participate in the ongoing interrogation of received knowledge and sensation.
Receiving anything – taking it into our mind and heart – always changes it. It is what it is and it is what we perceive it to be. We are forever adding our own unique inflection to the language of the world pouring into us. That is why I see my own proclivities in the shapes and patterns that Jen uses… and so I see my heroes, my influences, and my hopes there as well.
I make playlists every semester for my classes. These collections of songs are largely built from the ice-breaker/introduction discussion assignment I give to my students on the first day. I want to know what they listen to, what moves them, inspires them, sticks with them. And then I want to serve up songs during focused working time. With studio art classes at Mizzou lasting about 2 hours and 20 minutes, there’s plenty of time to get a vibe going. This way they can be both exposed to the things their peers love but also get the excitement of hearing their own personal deep cuts. I love the feeling of sharing some of my favorites with them, as well as discovering what “the youth” like today.
My interests in music are very eclectic, and that’s down to my exposure to so much variety through my students. But it didn’t start there. Below I am featuring a few of the most iconic Mix CDs I’ve been given over the last 25 years. I’m including Spotify playlists for each one. Go! Listen to them! In situations where the original song is not available on that platform I’m linking to YouTube videos.
I also want to shout out the amazing people who shared these four mixes with me. They are creative people and much cooler than I ever could be. I will link to some of their current projects. I’ll also talk about some of the tracks in each section and give some background on how these united groups of songs have stayed with me for a quarter century.
Ox-Bow is a lot more institutionalized now. Back then, it was a true bohemian type situation. What happened at Ox-Bow, stayed at Ox-Bow. The vibe there was a hold over from the 60s and 70s in a lot of ways, and this was before the world was really turned on its head by the US response to 911. The internet was still new and slow, there was practically no social media, and almost no one I knew had a cell phone. It was just a different time. There was room to go a little wild as well as room to explore your own thoughts and perspectives.
One of the best things that we did at Ox-Bow was have intense, blow-out parties every weekend. The cohort of fellowship residents did work during the main part of the week (maintenance, housekeeping, kitchen duties, etc), so when we partied, we went hard. A large meeting tent would be raised in the central field, a few turntables would be installed, and speakers deployed. Then our resident DJ, Eric May (with help from others) would spin records and CDs deep into the Michigan night.
I discovered a lot of great music that summer (The Beta Band, AIR, Massive Attack) and fell more in love with acts I’d always liked (Mazzy Star, Radiohead, PJ Harvey, Cat Stevens). Most of that stuff wasn’t being played at the parties, though, as they’re a bit too contemplative and musically less conducive to drunken dancing and themed costumes. Hence, the mix we all left with was something closer to late-90s college party than artsy hipster fare.
We definitely burned some calories to these songs…
*Eric checked in with me about this mix – he mentioned in the comments that Mikey H. and Reid T. had a larger hand in crafting it than he did! Shout out to Mikey and Reid! Reid has gone on to an amazing career as a scenic designer and has an amazing portfolio of exceptional design work. Go check him out!
Kitchens of Distinction – Under the Sea, Inside the Sky
Fred Sturkey worked with me at Good’s of Evanston. I started overseeing shipping and receiving for the art and frame store a couple weeks after 911 and about 4 weeks after the end of my Ox-Bow residency. I’ve written about Fred a bit before, and was very sad when he died in 2019. He was a high quality human, and was always happy to hold forth about music or politics, history or philosophy. Just a gentle, sweet guy.
This mix CD is one of the greatest gifts anyone has given me. This introduced me to HUM and Talk Talk and Kitchens of Distinction, three bands that have been in my life ever since. So different from one another, but totally unique and important. KoD is particularly interesting as a group from the late 80s/early 90s that championed the expression of queer relationships and perspectives. They did it in a matter-of-fact way, with a sense of imagery and poetry that draws the listener into shared human experience. I really love the texture of the guitar sound and the soaring vocals.
Structurally, the mix isn’t tracked perfectly, but it stands out for me purely because of the music it introduced me to. I’ll be forever grateful, Fred. RIP, sir.
Nikki is a successful artist who was also in the first drawing class I taught while in graduate school at Indiana University. She was dedicated, confident, and effortlessly cool. Those qualities have stayed with her as she built her career, had kids, and mounted major international shows of her work. She gave me this CD after we compared notes on music in that class, and she really got me hooked on The Shins, Spoon, and Nick Drake. An interesting combination of indie rock and mainstream(-ish) alt-pop, this mix is just a rich, comfortable listen. There are some great gems here, like Soul Coughing’s singer/creative engine Mike Doughty’s solo work in The Rising Sign.
Tina has an amazing energy. She’s a true go-getter, someone who is actively working to make the world better. As the founder and managing editor of The New Territory, she’s forging a space for the stories of the people and places that make up the Midwest to shine. She was a stand-out in my classes way back when, and she’s always a treat to collaborate with. I have written for The New Territory and made artworks for the magazine, as well as spoken at the Missouri Scholars Academy, which is one of Tina’s favorite annual summer projects.
This mix is highlighted by driving, raging, bloody tracks like the Peel Session version of Down to the Well by The Pixies, Saul Williams’s – List of Demands (Reparations), Ima Robot’s intensely violentPaint the Town Red, and Pistol of Fire by Kings of Leon. There’s definitely some serial killer vibes going on in this mix, but interesting moments of calm are interspersed throughout (Donovan’s Celia of the Seals or Blur’s Out of Time). There’s a variety of attitude in this mix – some of it is very serious, or even anxiety-producing (Greenwood’s Proven Lands or Williams’s List of Demands) – while other songs are tongue-in-cheek or just hilarious (Modern Lovers – Pablo Picasso or Miwa Gemini’s Traveling Man) I like the range of time across the tracks, as well as the tension between related genres/styles.
It’s loaded with bangers, all-time classics, and deeper cuts that stand the test of time. I’ve kept bringing these songs into my classroom since the day Tina handed the CD to me!
For some reason, the track order that was burned onto the CD itself is not the order that Tina wrote on sleeve – I ended up listening to it wrong for all these years…
The best part about these mixes is that they are palpable, physical artifacts made for me. Sure, we can listen to the music without the object, but the object is proof of something. It was there with me, and it was there with the people I mentioned. It shared space and time with us, and it travels along with us. The meaning is not only in the music, it’s in the fact of human interaction and sharing deeply human concerns.
Matt Ballou, Portrait of my Father, Marvin G. Smith. Oil on panel, 20×16 inches. 2014.
Marvin Glenn Smith died on Tuesday, August 12, 2025. He was 83 years old. Marv was born on May 24, 1942 in Camden, NY. He loved Studebaker cars, bawdy blues music, and the aircraft of World War 1. In many ways these things framed the contours of his life.
Known for his love of fast cars and racing, Marvin survived a horrible accident at the age of 19, an event that left him with extensive, permanent injuries. He spent the rest of his life going to auto shows, attending and watching races around the country, and collecting manuals and other materials related to cars and the racing world.
Mom and Dad, mid 1970s.
Marv went on to a long career at Camden Wire, working in the quality assurance area, where he was able to use his sharp skills in analysis and mathematics. He took an early retirement in 1995, eventually settling north of Camden in Empeyville, NY.
It was at this time that his decades long passion for studying World War 1 became a main focus for him. He filled his time with reading and research, amassing a collection of WW1 books, objects, documents, firearms, and art. He traveled extensively to explore military history at museums and trade shows, but perhaps most cherished was his trip to Germany in 1997, where he visited many battle sites first hand.
He had a unique personality – a calm, pleasant demeanor with a touch of nihilism sprinkled in. He would constantly drop catch phrases into conversations: “Nothin’ serious” and “Another day in paradise” came up often. As a “live and let live” Libertarian, Marv often found himself at odds with the dominant, invasive politics of his adult life. Though a quiet, reserved man, he always enjoyed conversation and could hold forth about the blues or history any time. He loved discussing items in his WW1 collection and possessed an exhaustive knowledge of the people and places of that time.
My last chat with my dad, 2025. Photo by my sister.
He is survived by his sisters Linda (Leon) and Martha, his children Walter, Matthew (Alison), and Stacey, and many grand kids. He was preceded in death by his parents and beloved daughter Denya. At Marvin’s request, there will be no funeral service.
My sister Stacey was able to retrieve a piece of dad’s WW1 trench art, a 50mm artillery shell decorated in a floral motif with an eagle. This will serve as dad’s urn when he is buried in his family plot. It’s wild – and sort of perfectly poetic – that something made by a young man in the tumultuous trenches of a world at war 110 years ago, will now go into the ground in upstate NY with my father. In a way, he got to take one part of the collection he built over a lifetime with him.
I’m pleased to announce the publication of a catalog about the exhibition that Simon Tatum and I had at Vanderbilt University last year. Working with Oswaldo Garcia at The Riso Room, housed within Mizzou’s School of Visual Studies, I was able to produce a slim volume that highlights some of the work and writing that Simon and I produced for this show. We hope to take the exhibition around to other venues, and these catalogs feel like a great physical supplement to proposals. Click below to take a look inside.
The images show representative examples of the work we include, as well as updated texts that give an overview of the history and context we’re working within. I’m excited by how the risograph process has captured the documentary quality of Simon’s work and the surface development of my own pieces. I love the way the back cover shows Donald Crowhurst’s final coda, “IT IS THE MERCY.” Taken from his logs, this is Crowhurst’s actual writing reproduced.
If you’re interested in obtaining a copy for $25, please send payment via one of the options below:
Today I went into the printmaking room at The University of Missouri and placed a lithophane in the widows there.
The idea for this began a few years ago while playing with my drawing robot. I wanted to try different line modes in various images, and happened to throw in a picture of Eric. One of the resulting works was this small ballpoint pen piece:
Head of Sweet. Ink on paper, 5×3 inches. 2022.
The piece I’ve hung today is intentionally related to Sweet’s MFA thesis works, which featured embossed relief and required specific lighting to be seen. Click here to see examples of these works (and a cool picture of Eric in the very printmaking room where my lithophane is now hanging). The portrait of Eric I’ve made is designed to be somewhat inscrutable unless strongly lit from behind. In the documentary images I’ve posted below, you can see the image is barely visible. I have included some shots with a flash on so you can see the relief dimension of the piece.
Ten Years of Seizing the Sixth. PLA, printed on a FlashForge Adventurer 5M. It’s 7×5.25x.25 in size. 2025.
It’s important to maintain the reality of those who have passed on. This is as much about keeping ourselves real as much as it is celebrating their lives. In reminding ourselves of others’ lives, in being creative in that remembering, we find and define ourselves. Keeping Eric in the world through making and practicing attention is a way of honoring him and the values he held.
Ten Years of Seizing the Sixth. PLA, 7×5.25x.25 in size. 2025. This is what it looks like with strong illumination behind the lithophane.
Nine years ago today I experienced cardiac arrest, and I started a journey to becoming a new person. One of the ongoing fun bits related to my heart attack and eventual recovery, was that my friend – famed bookstore co-owner, and local arts organization legend – Kelsey finally accepted the reality of narwhals!
You see, it – the existence of narwhals that is – had been a minor contention between us for quite a while (see above image). I’d mention the unicorn of the sea and she’d push back. But when I woke up from my ordeal and began sorting through the notes, good vibes, and other well-wishes I found a Post-It note from Kelsey. On it she drew the beast and wrote above it, POR VIDA – “for life!” She told me that since I’d pulled through, she could accept the truth of narwhal-kind!
I’ve kept Kelsey’s Post-It note up all these years, right there in my kitchen where I can see it daily. But this year I felt it was appropriate to take it to the next level. I’ve commissioned a local tattoo artist to bring Kelsey’s drawing to life on my very flesh!
Once it is healed up I’ll add a nice shot of it to this post. I’m grateful to people like Kelsey, who have given me so much joy and hope in humanity over the years. She is a true community spirit, someone who understands kindness and laughter. And I’m proud to carry her drawing with me – on me! – from now on, a reminder to seize the day, be happily present, and to embrace the wondrous absurdities all around us.
One of my favorite prints (and a few words) has been reproduced in this new book from Renascence Books., located in Nashville, TN. The book is an anthology of work related to Gaza/Palestine from 30 artists around the globe. 100% of profits will be donated to mutual aid for Gazans. See the blurb from the back of the book below, and follow this link to purchase your own. This book is the creation of a diverse group of people who have a variety of connections to Gaza/Palestine and who come from many different faith traditions and worldviews. But we’ve come together to make a visible, physical artifact of care and support for real folx on the ground over there. They should not be forgotten in all of the vitriol and political obfuscation. Please, support the effort and the artists within this hopeful book if you can.
I offer my work for this project as a prayer that agency, protection, and hope may soon return to this ancient land, that mothers may soon cradle their children in safety, that fathers may soon sing ancient songs to them with confidence and joy.
See this fantastic blog from 11 years ago linked below. A nice tribute to Ray Johnson, who died on this day in 1995. He was a strange, unique man. At the intersection of queerness, neurodivergence, and mental illness, Johnson lived his whole adult life as an artwork. The amazing documentary How To Draw A Bunny (click the title to watch it), is a celebration of this one-of-a-kind life. Every semester I show this to my 2000 level drawing students as a way to demonstrate how mature artists create a vernacular of form and idea in their works, a way of creating and speaking that forms the architecture and language of their art. Ray’s life (and even his way of dying, in a sense) was inspirational.
eikonktizo 