Mountains’ walking is just like human walking. Accordingly, do not doubt mountains’ walking even though it does not look the same as human walking. — Dogen
Matt Shaw lives on the Blue Hill peninsula where he works as an artist, teacher, and bookseller. His work centers around a slow practice of looking and listening that engages walking, conversation, and research into local history and relationships with the more-than-human world.
Born and raised in Poughkeepise, New York he first came to Maine in 2007 to attend College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. After earning his BA in Human Ecology from COA he enrolled in a year of the college’s MPhil program before attending the University of Illinois at Chicago. At UIC he was part of a small interdisciplinary program of artists and earned his MFA in Moving Image in 2014. He has been back in Maine since 2017, working at College of the Atlantic and Blue Hill Books. A member of the Morgan Bay Zendo and Zen DownEast, he is a student of Diane Shoshin Fitzgerald in the combined lineage that derives from Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett and Robert Aitken Roshi.
His art practice has been supported by LEF Foundation, Maine Arts Commission, Arteles Creative Center, the Anahata Foundation, a Flaherty Film Seminar Fellowship, and the Kindling Fund.
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interview in the Ellsworth American
P.O. Box 781 Blue Hill, ME 04614
mshaw410(at)pm(dot)me
I have a great deal of respect for the U.S. Postal Service. — Ima Plume