Matthew Best

Two experiences last summer fed into these ideas. The first was a trip to the dentist involving a tremendous amount of novocaine, the second tasting an unripe persimmon. Both experiences caused my mouth to become a foreign entity. In the case of novocaine, the reason is obvious. With persimmons it is a chemical reaction. Unripe persimmons are extremely astringent; in touching the very tip of my tongue to the fruit caused my tongue to feel as though it was wrapped in cotton, completely dry.

The idea start to come together, leading to my favorite fungus, cordyceps, a nasty little fungus that takes over the bodies of insects, eventually overwhelming and killing them. A nasty metaphor for the unknown.

I'll be the first to admit my ideas move all over the place, I'm incapable of making a piece that is about one thing, each piece tends to represent a grouping of thoughts and experiences rather than anything singular. I like the flow charts because they come as close to representing my thought process as anything else, jumping around from point A to point B via point C as illustrated below.

Tent Caterpillars, beautiful shapes filled with nasty little caterpillars.

Amanita fungus, groteque and beautiful, found growing outside of my old apartment late last year.

Sketches after Soutine, done in Paris at L'Orangerie. I have always been drawn to both the horror and the humor of his paintings of dead animals.

Late Winter/Early Spring. The architecture of trees and vines before they are obscured by leaves, like a line drawing.

Wild Persimmons I found in VA last year, scanned directly into the computer. Masses of the fruit would accumulate on the trail, some whole, some rotten.