We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matt Forderer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matt below.

Matt, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

UCSD’s Medical research facility at Campus Point in La Jolla. I got to create digital murals for about 5 rooms including a board room, a conference room, a 60′ wall for a banquet facility, and others. I began creating digital images while working with a poet from Austin, Texas on a future coffee table book called “The Micro Cosmos”. We had no deadline but wanted to create 100 images and 100 poems to go along. Mine would be greyscale and kind of creating surrealistic images that married undersea and above the sea, inner space, and outer space. I showed these to an architect in San Diego who was turning his focus to interiors and got this job at this Biotech facility. His name is Matthew Ellis. I did a mural and it was really well received and was asked to do this big job next. It was wonderful getting to use collages I had made and see them made into walls. For the 60′ Banquet wall I made a kind of fantasy reef, employing spray techniques and then scanning those, and inhabiting it with plants created by combining blooming succulent photos and flowers. It also had seahorses floating throughout.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I create digital wall murals. I am a surrealist and can bend that in all sorts of ways. I believe I have a unique approach taking macro photographs and using those as a base in Photoshop creating realms that have a lot of depth. I have also done whimsical work for the Crack Shack restaurants taking famous images and kind of “chickenizing” them. I worked on 6 restaurants, 5 in California and one in Las Vegas. I also love collage and have employed that. Once doing a building wrap for a business called Escapology at Belmont Park, Mission Beach in San Diego. I used “Steam Punk” type images and created kind of a race wrapping around the building…with invented hot-air ballons, sometimes with fish as the balloon, sail boats, and trains.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I just love to share my work. To show people something they haven’t seen before. I am so proud of the 12 jobs I worked on so far, ranging from a Bio-Tech building to an Escape Room, a winery, and many restaurants. I just love knowing that people continually are experiencing the digital murals I created. As a fine artist, I love having art shows. Even if no work sells, many things still happen that are wonderful. It puts a fire under me to create a bunch of new work by a certain date. I get to bring together all sorts of friends for an experience and it’s really being part of the time that I am living in… contributing something. An event that people enjoy that will create fond memories.
The creation of the paintings and works of art is also most rewarding. Envisioning a piece and seeing it through to completion. Being in my own space, enjoying music and painting. Doing the hard part, getting through the underpainting, and eventually rounding the corner to having it turn out well and feeling great satisfaction from creating something new.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I was a Photoshop artist for 20 years at a place called Found Image Press here in San Diego. The company takes vintage images and turns them into products like greeting cards, calendars, magnets, etc. I scanned old postcards and other materials and then would restore them in Photoshop. In that 20 years, I restored over 50,000 images. It was highly enjoyable seeing these cool old images every day and doing it for so long that I became quite fluent in Photoshop so it wasn’t too hard. I lived close and would skateboard to work. Then covid came along. the company largely did business by sending people to trade shows. Those stopped.
they also did, maybe 60% of their business in museums, those closed. The business was in real trouble and had to lay me off.
I am quite fluent in Photoshop but that is the only application I had used for 20 years, and could not find a graphics job.
I took a job doing something completely different. I am now working in production building high-end headphones for a place called Dan Clark audio. The highest-end model goes for $4000. We are all listening to our own music all day on these amazing headphones, and the same focus that I used in cleaning images I now apply to drill in screws, and soldering and doing all of the things involved in making headphones. I am now giving more attention to creating fine art as well and just had a show in Barrio Logan here in San Diego.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.mattforderer.com
• Instagram: #mattforderer