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Each month, Texas State University President Dr. Kelly Damphousse sits down with faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and community members for a conversation about all things TXST — the past, the present, and the bright future of the university.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
- So cooler weather we're experiencing here in Texas, that feels pretty good to you.
- It's nothing, it's nothing.
- [Kelly] Nothing to you at all.
- However, I did get caught in the driving, and people said, you can't drive. And I was telling these guys, I was like, I can drive in snow. And they're like, it's not about you, it's about the others.
- My wife says that all the time, we were gonna drive to Dallas last week and she nixed the idea and I said, it's not a problem. She said, I don't worry about you, I worry about everybody else. And she's from Texas, so she's allowed to say that.
- [Matthew] Yep.
- Hey, Bobcats, this is Kelly Damphousse president of Texas State University. Welcome to The Current podcast. Today we've got a special experience for you all. We have Matthew Mazzotta, who actually created our sleeping bobcat statue that's going to welcome students into Cibolo Hall. Matthew, thank you for joining us.
- Thanks for having me.
- So tell us a little bit about you. We were talking earlier, you're actually half Canadian, which I think is pretty exciting.
- Yeah, someone one just told me that, that you're Canadian. And so, yeah, I'm half Canadian. My mom's from Newfoundland, Canada, and my dad's from Manhattan in New York City. So they're super urban and the super rural.
- Two places could not be more different, the Newfoundland and Manhattan. So, but did you grow up in the New York area?
- I grew up in northern New York state up near the Canadian border, so. Everybody, I just say I live in Canada, just, but go back into America for a second, you know? Seven hours from New York City.
- Oh wow, it's a long way up there.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Tell us a little bit about how you got started in public art. I think the very first thing that I knew about you was the big flamingo in Tampa, right? But you've been doing public art for a long time. Why'd you get into this area?
- So, I grew up in this small little town and there was no capital C culture. Like we had the, you know, the hockeys and the baseballs and the church and the school and this and that. But like real art I had not seen before live. And then I remember like all these train cars used to come through our little town and it had graffiti, fresh graffiti, I remember.
- It's like traveling art, right, yeah.
- For me, I felt that way, I was like, I wanna see. Then the other thing was MTV, which doesn't exist anymore, but this was like music television. Maybe you remember this.
- Back when MTV played videos, right. And so in Canada we had MuchMusic something like that.
- Yeah.
- And so, yeah, and so kind of like that became kinda a new art form of the video version of a song.
- Super artsy stuff. Not only did you feel the passion of music, but also those visuals were so extreme compared to the rest of TV that I would soak that up. So anyways, I knew that I liked that. I was a little bit of a rebel, like let's say with music and skateboarding, this kind of stuff. One of my art teachers showed me the Andy Warhol factory or the warehouse where Andy Warhol is like, you know, videotaping people till they cry or their sleep all night, or Velvet Underground was playing with tinfoil on the wall. And I was like, OK, this is crazy stuff. But then I went home and my parents had a book with Andy Warhol. So I was like, how is this possible you can act this crazy, but also be respected. So I kind of thought, I found a loophole. I was like, you know what? That's probably the direction I'm gonna go in is art. For some reason it seems to grip people and be meaningful. Then I got into activism. A lot about animal rights, actually, to tell you the truth. But it's also about the earth, women's rights, whatever it may be, fighting on behalf of others. But we'd always be in the street with signs trying to make your message as clean as possible so people would read it and maybe they would transform.
- Yeah, you can't put a whole paragraph on a sign. I need four words or a saying or something.
- Yeah, I think that distilling of a message is kind of a thread that's kind of in all my work in a way. Yeah, I just kind of felt I hit a glass ceiling, I was like, this transitional space of like a car going by and me trying to put a message real quick it wasn't working. So I said, how do I flip it and make something so curious that people are drawn to it through their own, you know, volition. And so that's how I started with the work. I was like, how do you bring ideas into the public discourse? And I thought, I think artwork's gonna be my way through the spectacle and enchanting people into it.
- So what was your first piece then?
- First piece like just was probably graffiti. Like, you know, the spray can, 'cause you're in a little town, you don't know what to do. But the first piece that was meaningful for me was this thing called the Busycle. We were in Boston. Boston's a slightly segregated city. Everybody's got a different neighborhood and each neighborhood is treated differently in terms of public transportation. Certain neighborhoods get more transportation, some get less. So we worked with this one neighborhood that we felt had a lot of disinvestment. We said, hey, what can we do here? Can we produce a piece of public transportation built by you guys? Powered by you guys? And goes where the people wanna go. It's called the Busycle. This is a hard project to talk about because it became like this commercial thing. Like you've probably seen 'em in other city where everybody's pedaling on something.
- Yeah, so it's like a passenger powered vehicle, right?
- Yeah. But at the time, those didn't exist. So we made that and there was so much interest, but that was the first time I saw public space art activism and community all come together. Then the city said, hey, we wanna support you as well. And I'm like, why we're critiquing you? And they're like, it's not like we don't know about this stuff. So that's when I saw local government came in and I was like, wow, we're all working together at this. I never thought artists could have a seat at that table. So that's kind of the most meaningful early one.
- Are animals kind of a central theme for you? I know the ones I'm most familiar with have animals involved.
- Yeah, someone asked me that recently. I didn't realize that I have many animal projects right now and they all do different things and we can talk about this one here what I think it's doing. But recently I went back into my old paintings or or sketches and collages and they're full of animals and architecture. And I realized that's kind of been my life I guess from the beginning is I've always been interested in spaces and also animals and in this case with Local Habitat, how the animal inhabits a building.
- Yeah, well let's turn our attention now to Local Habitat. And so that's the formal name of the bobcat, the sleeping bobcat at Cibolo. What was the inspiration for the look of that piece? I remember seeing some drawings early on when you were in the competition phase. It kinda looked a little cartoonish a little bit and there was different versions of like how the bobcat was posed. It turned out to be unbelievable. Walk us through the process.
- My work is always based on research. I'm always like, what can I contribute to this situation, to this community? And I was thinking, OK, the students are gonna sleep in here. They're working, but they're gonna be staying in here. So I was like, what could hold this message that, or a message that would be relevant to them? So I kind of took this idea of mental health or well-being as probably an important aspect of this student life. The other one I took was ecology and the environment. So I said, let's try to bring those two into the focus. Mental health and ecology. I said, what's the vehicle? And so I started thinking, what is in San Marcos? What can be here? I was like, the bobcat as the mascot, but you can't do that. How do you bring art to a mascot? And then I was like, well it's only known for its ferocity and its courage and all these things. What happens if we flip it and say it also has a life?
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- It also has to find a place to sleep, it also has to chill.
- It can't be ferocious if it doesn't sleep at some point.
- Exactly. It needs to recharge. And it has to have a family, it has to have a life. It has to have a place where it can go. So I was like, OK, I'm gonna play with this idea. What if we show this other dimension of the bobcat? And I saw the same thing. It's a metaphor. That bobcat is a metaphor for the students. They have to kill it with their work. They have to do well in the academics, in the stadium, with their sports, whatever, but they gotta come home and chill. And so this is showing that the bobcat does have this other dimension. So that was kind of the crux of this work for me was like, people are gonna be sleeping in this dormitory, so let's make it a sleeping bobcat with a smile. It's up on this nice perch, it feels safe. So hopefully it echoes the fact that there's safety here.
- I think a theme that I'll come back to over the next couple years when we're talking about this particular piece of art, because we think a lot about mental health for our students and about how challenging it is right now with the complication of social media and the anxiety about getting jobs when they graduate and so on, and how hard you have to work as a student. But the important thing you can do for self-help is really one of the easiest things to do, and that's just to rest and to recreate a little bit. And that's why I think about, about this piece here is that it'll be a reminder for me when I'm talking to our students about the value of sleeping is that piece there. So it's gonna have like a multifaceted interpretation for us. The other thing is you could oppose that in lots of different ways, but you, we ended up choosing kind of the dangling arm, talk about the process about exactly what it was gonna look like in the end.
- I guess we use animals in all different ways to, you know, to identify our emotions. Like the bobcat often has the teeth out. Sometimes it's sitting there as majestic. In this case I'd not seen it sleeping before in such a large scale. And I was like, just thinking about that. I'm like, what does that mean? That means that somebody has taken the time to find a place where they feel comfortable, they feel safe, and they wanna relax. So then all of a sudden the arm happens and then I'm like, huh, this canopy is about this big. Can we have the hand go below the canopy so you can kind of see it from coming out of the building as well. So there's kind of a lot of little, you know, happy accidents that happen with that piece. And ultimately it comes down to, yeah, when the sun comes out, it's just baking in the sun, kind of relaxing, it looks great.
- And it is cool when you're coming out of the building, you can actually see the paw kind of dangling down below and it like catches your eye and go, oh, something's up there, and you turn around. And I've seen so many pictures of at night where-
- Oh, beautiful.
- Where that's lit up in a certain way that I actually think. I actually think a lot of public art looks better at night. Like when you go to the Capitol to the mall.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I love to go at night, 'cause when it's lit up it just looks different.
- Yep. I think our lights, we're gonna dial those in soon, but there's gonna be lights coming for that, so it also will have this other atmosphere coming.
- So what is, what's next for you?
- I have a piece that I'm developing in Fort Worth and then we're also doing one for the Austin Airport. So for whatever reason I have work here in this area of the world. I don't know why, but I also have work, you know, one's coming out in Denver, one for the San Diego airport, I have one in England. So you know, I'm always layering all the projects, but just happy to be here for this one where it kind of, we, I feel like we hit the nail on the head like we got it done, but also it's like resonating. And I'm just watching some of the comments, so many people love it, but then it says, I love art that has a deeper meaning too. I'm like, wow, they're getting it. So this is amazing.
- Yeah.
- You know, if you look at something and don't have a response to it, either negative or positive, then it probably has missed the mark altogether. The overwhelming response has been positive. And I think that's really special. Thank you so much for bringing your artistic abilities to Texas State and for making our campus better and for reminding us the value of sleep and rest and about our legacy with the Bobcat.
- I love it. I'm glad we even get to talk about this, thank you.
- We're gonna come back in just a minute and talk with Nisa Barger, who is the public art expert for the Texas State University System. She's in charge of public art all across the entire system, all the universities and colleges that are involved here. And she's gonna talk about the value of public art and why it's so important for us. All right, we're back, Bobcats, to learn more about public art at the Texas State University System in general. I've got Nisa Barger here. And so Nisa is actually in charge of all the public art projects that are happening across the system. And you know, a lot of people don't know that we're part of a larger system with seven institutions total. And so you got all the way from Eagle Pass and Sul Ross State University all the way to Lamar, which is right on the, you know, the Louisiana border and Sam Houston State in the middle there, and us kind of in the middle as well. And so it's really interesting to learn more, I think about the system for our listeners, but also to learn about specific issues related to things like public art. So Nisa, tell us a little bit about yourself. Like how did you get in this position?
- Sure. Well, I am very lucky to have this position. There aren't a lot of-
- We're lucky to have you.
- Directors of public art at Texas institutions and I was hired last May, so I still consider myself a newbie to the system. My job, director of public art is based in the Austin office where the chancellor of the Texas State University System is housed, and I report directly to the chancellor.
- And he's a huge advocate for public art.
- He is.
- First off, he's a connoisseur. So he understands art at a level like I have no concept, but he also values what it can do for a university. And wants to make sure that we don't just have decorations, but we have actual art.
- He is very committed. I guess 2022 the chancellor created a director of public art position, mainly I think to ensure a standard of quality in selections of the public art across the system. So that's my job is to help facilitate the selection, creation and installation of all of these new works of public art here at Texas State. And as you mentioned, as far west as Sul Ross, as far east as Beaumont and Port Arthur and Orange, Texas.
- And where were you right before here? Like what's your career progression?
- Well, I didn't really set out to work in public art, but it has ended up making a lot of sense based on my background. So I'm a native Texan. I grew up in Boerne, which is not too far from here. And I left to go to college on the East Coast. I went to Brown and I have a degree in urban studies, which is this very nebulous sort of degree. I thought I wanted to go to law school. I did not end up going to law school. In a roundabout way, I ended up going to grad school in art history. I thought I wanted to teach, but I kind of jumped off that train after my master's degree and pretty shortly thereafter kind of was lucky enough to get hired at Landmarks, which is UT's public art program.
- So you're still kind of teaching though, right? Because you have to work with these committees that are making decisions and then the public generally, and presidents and so on about what the value is and why this is art versus this is decoration and so on. So there's still a teaching element to it.
- That's true. I hadn't really thought about it that way, but I should embrace that aspect of my work a little bit more. You know, I think one of my aspirations is to make sure that we put out information that's really accessible to the public. So I've created a standard sign that has a QR code that will lead people to a little bit more information and eventually they'll be short kind of explanatory videos that people can watch about every piece. So they'll learn in a very easy, accessible way.
- Yeah, one of the things we have envisioned for this campus is that people can do a walking tour. And a lot of our public art is really public 'cause it's outdoors, but a lot of our art is actually inside buildings as well. So if we, and I think the QR code is really gonna be important if people can walk along and say, now walk to Flowers and look at this, or now walk to Alkek and see this and.
- [Nisa] Yes.
- You know, I think people are really familiar with a couple pieces of public art, the Stallions, which has been around for a long time. And by the way, I learned something recently about the Stallions. I'm not sure if you're familiar with this. You know, it looks like a bronze statue, but it's actually aluminum. And a decision was made several years ago to paint it brown, so it looks bronze, but I have a dream of like bringing back the aluminum look, because I think it's stunning. I got a picture in my office of the Strutters lined up for their annual picture in front of it, and it just looks different-
- Pre painting. I would love to see that. I haven't seen any images of it and it's-
- I'll send you a version of it. Because it's just, you don't see a lot of aluminum statues out there.
- Yeah. They're always painted. And I think there's... We'll bring a conservator and to tell us if that would be a good idea.
- Yeah, it might not be a good idea, it's just a dream I have. But then we have the LBJ Statue of course, which actually is in some ways a form of art, but also a form of kind of recognizing our heritage here. And then we've got the Vaquero statue, which is actually relatively new in front of Old Main as well. So we've got a few pieces that are kind of well known, but we are increasingly adding pieces. How many pieces of public art do you think we have on our campus? I'm asking you something I don't even know the answer to.
- There are, we just had an appraisal done of all the public art in the system. It's a challenge to even identify what is public art, because they're, in a lot of cases, these objects have no recorded information about where they came from. But all that said, there's somewhere in the order of a hundred, to 150 objects that should be considered public art on the San Marcus Campus. Another 75 in Round Rock.
- Round Rock actually has a lot, when you think about per capita, we only only have three buildings right now, there's a lot of public art in that space. And we actually do something kind of neat up there. And so we invite artists to come and display their work there as well. So we had kind of like a rotating-
- Community-based artists, yes.
- Yeah, it's really interesting.
- Which I have nothing to do with.
- Yeah. And actually I give Julie Lessiter and her team up there a lot of credit for kind of stimulating that. And sometimes it's like high school students who are exhibiting their art, but also local artists as well. What is the value of public art? Like why do we care? Why do we commit so much resource? It may seem like to you and me natural, but why do we care?
- It's a good question. I think there are a lot of different motivations behind it. I wouldn't necessarily be able to hazard a guess as to what the people who, you know, this is all based in Texas Government Code. So there's a government code that says any public building project over $250,000 could set aside money to have public art. But I think a lot of it is understanding that art can help make a space not only perhaps more beautiful, more unique, a little bit more expressive of the character, of the types of people that inhabit that space. Deepen the kind of the story of a place. And it is also, you know, culturally western culture has supported some form of public art in its public spaces since the beginning. I mean, you can think about ancient Rome and all the monuments and sculptures and fountains. And as a culture, we have an appreciation for these kinds of artistic statements that tell us who we are, a little bit more about who we are.
- The interesting part is that these things last way longer than the people who installed them and paid for them and built them, created them. But they say something about the people long after they're gone that put them there. Now there's a balance, I'm guessing for someone in your position working with these universities to have pieces that are like directly tied to the values and culture of that university. Like the sleeping bobcat kind of makes sense because that's our mascot. But we have other pieces that are just art for the sake of art that aren't really tied to the university as well. So how do you balance that when you're working with committees to not make like everything be a bobcat or everything be maroon and gold, but actually art for art's sake.
- We're starting now beginning the process of making selections for a couple new building projects on campus. The way that I have it organized selections come through a committee. So the public art committee here on the campus, I don't know if you know this, but it's majority appointees from the president's office. And those are people who are faculty in art and design, faculty representatives from the college that is building the building, student representatives, campus planners and architects, and all the different views that they bring to the table help cultivate that kind of broader perspective. And we can collectively make decisions about what makes sense for the art, the public art in this particular project's context. Whether it needs to be very specific like the STEM building, well, the art needs to speak to math or computer science, or could it be a more broad statement or perhaps something that's just really beautiful and people can't look away from it. And it becomes a landmark for the campus that people talk about.
- You know, it's interesting that the concept of public art is not just, you know, connected only to Texas State University. You said it's a state policy. I remember going to Pittsburgh when I was a graduate student and I was driving around and I noticed all these pieces of art out there. They had a requirement in the city of Pittsburgh. Every time they built a new building, they required even the private people who were building buildings to build a piece of art. And that became like... Yeah, that became the thing that really defined the city. All these pieces of art that are out there, so. Can you compare and contrast Minerva with a sleeping bobcat? Like what's the difference between the two? I know, they're different in so many ways, but yeah.
- They are. Well, one difference is that Local Habitat or the sleeping bobcat is something you would say that is architecturally integrated.
- Yeah, it's actually on the building.
- On the building and integrated into the architecture of the building. Whereas Minerva is a kind of freestanding sculpture in front of the building, obviously materially different. We have marble, which is something that has traditionally been used and considered like high quality, you know, stands a test of time, sculptural material.
- But kind of a modern take on using, you know, kind of ancient material, but a modern take on how to get that piece put together.
- It certainly is. I mean, created by robots.
- Yeah. It's unbelievable.
- Yeah. Actually in some similar ways the Bobcat was kind of sculpted out of process of removing the fiberglass and coming up with this bobcat shape out of a large piece of fiberglass. So that's a similarity.
- Yeah. That actually, it's a good, that's a good point.
- And they're both figurative.
- Yeah, they're both, yeah. And they're both exterior too. So it's interesting in the Round Rock Campus, I think all of our art up there is interior-
- It is, there is no outdoor work yet.
- Yeah. So yet. So work on that. Well we're in the middle of a big building boom. We've been doing this for 25 years or so. We got a lot of new buildings coming online, and so we're excited to look forward to more and more pieces of public art.
- Yes. Stay tuned.
- And I'm excited to see what you all have in mind for us. And it's interesting, so the committee kind of comes together and has a short list and I'm usually presented like three or four options. And the chancellor actually is involved in the process as well. But what I love about it is the entire campus has a say in what this becomes, it's not just one person. And having you involved, someone with some expertise to kind of help us be consistent in our thinking because the committee changes over the years, I think, brings a lot of stability to that process. So thank you for doing that.
- Of course. It's my pleasure.
- Well, I can't wait to see the next few pieces that are coming our way.
- You and me both.
- Absolutely. Well, Nisa, one of the fun things we do here is we get to hear from people who are experts in their field. And sometimes it's the first time they've done a podcast, and you told me this was your first podcast.
- This is my first podcast.
- You did great by the way. And so thank you for doing that. But we always give our guests an opportunity to turn the tables here. And so we invite our listeners to submit questions to me and we ask our guests to read the questions. So you get to be host here.
- Oh boy.
- I have not seen the questions, so I don't know what it is, but we're gonna let you read it and then I'll do my best to answer it.
- I think you're well equipped to answer this.
- [Kelly] All right.
- What advice do you have for students to make the most of their time at university?
- Oh, that's a great question. I get that. I get asked that question a lot. And I would recommend people do differently than I did. I was so focused, and part of that's my upbringing. So I went to community college for the first two years and I went and got a job, I was a prison guard for three years, I went back to college. And when I went back I was very like instrumental. I was just there to get a degree and I was just kinda locked in on the classes and didn't understand because I was a first-generation college student as well. Didn't understand all the stuff that was happening at the university until way late in my college career, and I missed out on a lot of opportunities. And I oftentimes will hear parents on social media say, my daughter is attending Texas State and she's having trouble making friends or he's not, doesn't feel very connected to the university. And there's so many opportunities, there's so many student organizations that are extracurricular, but it's also some that are curricular defined that are, like student clubs for your, that are discipline specific. There's so many ways to get involved beyond just going to class. And, by the way, that includes just walking around the campus and enjoying the art and the nature. We've got one of the most beautiful campuses in the country with the river and the lake and now all this public art that we're having here. But I would just say people need to take, think about ways to take advantage of everything here beyond just going to class. Because while that's important, and going to class is very important. But we're trying to create opportunities for our students to become great citizens and great people. People who understand the value of the world just beyond the day-to-day work things. But also the context of the world and the context of art and culture and current and public events and so on, and creating a well-rounded citizen. And so that can start here in college, getting active in politics and staying up to date on current events and so on. It's not just about learning stuff, it's about experiencing a new way to be as opposed to a new thing to do. I just made that up, I kind of like that.
- I like it.
- Yeah. Well, thanks so much for joining us and thank you for joining us as well. It's always exciting to hear more about what's happening on our campus. I learned more through this podcast, I think, than almost anything else I do here at Texas State. I hope you're learning more about what's happening here as well. Thanks so much and States Up, everyone.