Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Matt Kennedy. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Matt, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
Almost as soon as I could walk I was drawing. I learned to read very early and grew up in a household with a set of Collier’s Encyclopedias and Year Books which provided in-depth features on famous artists from antiquity up til the mid century when this set was published. Each volume had only a few color pages, all grouped in the middle, so when looking up artists like Jackson Pollack or Salvador Dali, my first impression of their work was in black and white. Seeing their paintings in color for the first time in my teens was really a little mind-blowing. While I am decent draftsman of many disciplines I have always been better at identifying talent in others, and that led me into curation and collaboration until I circled back to my own creative endeavors late in life.
Matt, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I think most people probably know me as the gallerist who ran La Luz de Jesus for a decade or as the owner of Gallery 30 South, since my career as a gallery director put me in a position to discover thousands of artists and be the first to exhibit and sell their work. By sheer quantity, there is a good chance that I have sold more unique pieces of art and by more artists than any other contemporary curator and something that I still do today. Pop Sequentialism started as one of those curations. It was the first modern survey exhibition dedicated to Superhero-centric sequential art, and it grew to launch publications, podcasts, blogs, traveling art shows, and an online shop. I still write a comic book investment column for GoCollect and conduct artist profiles for Larry Flynt Publications in between the monthly shows on gallery30south.com. But a lot of people who know me now are unaware that back in the 90s, I was a commercial actor who starred in a handful of TV pilots, guest-starred on award-winning series, and featured in over 20 commercials –four of which were Superbowl spots, and two won Clios. Fewer still are aware that I was founder of Panik House Entertainment and later the Panik Collective, which is an association of anonymous culture jammers who have museum exhibited globally. And at this point, even though it may have been my largest consistent audience, I was Flickhead, the film critic for 97.1 The FM Talk Station as part of the number one English Language Drive Time show in Los Angeles and as part of the Rikki Rachtman Radio show. I’ll skip past the years of performing in bands back in Boston and in Hollywood and Chicago…
Allowing myself multiple creative outlets may have prevented me from becoming a quick specialist, but choosing occupations that encouraged creative expression not only prepared me for my career, it also instilled a high degree of versatility that makes me the go-to guy for a lot of pretty specific areas of expertise. From film licensing, remastering and translation services to art presentation and appraisal to public art and activism, I view all of my careers as aggregate experience that works in tandem with my hobbies.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Being born outside of an Industry Town, I had very little understanding of publishing or the entertainment business, The Our Gang style, adhoc community performances, the edited-in-camera Dungeons and Dragons fan shorts, the surrealist interviews of inanimate objects and the very many TV commercial parody videos were all thought-up mainly on the spot, and were never made with any kind of purpose beyond just entertaining ourselves. If I had been born twenty years later I suppose all that content would have been uploaded to YouTube instead of lost to time and video rot. If I had grown up in Burbank I may have known sooner to pursue film and that probably would have become life, skipping past the music and drawing.. I’d probably be even more of an art collector than I am already but probably never would have worked-in nor opened a gallery. And as simplifying as that alternate reality may seem, I wouldn’t trade the years of struggle for that. Most of the closest friendships of my life are with the artists I’ve represented over the years. I credit not knowing exactly what I wanted to do with allowing me to gather a large enough sample size of possibilities to make the best choices for the person I am now. I also got to audit a lot of classes at some truly great schools, so I got the education for free; without the degrees, but also without the student debt.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
Life is relationships. Sure there are books and YouTube videos that can teach you almost everything, but the most important ingredient for success is encouragement. That and discipline will take you further than talent. I have seen amazing technicians leave the arts behind after becoming discouraged and we’ve all seen people with very little natural ability flourish. There is a factory-painter industry that employs hundreds of thousands of Chinese artists who can each paint better than nearly every single art school graduate from every country on earth, but we’ll never know their names because of barriers in communication, creativity, and opportunity. Whether or not you go to an art school, where you’ll be mercilessly critiqued into developing thick skin and refining your style, you need a support group and a peer group. Artists need to be safely challenged, but not coddled. If you personally know someone who has succeeded in the career that you want to pursue, you have personal proof that it is possible. That makes your goal less a dream and more of a plan. If you don’t have family or close friends, you need to find your tribe wherever you can. A book or music or a video or a podcast can be a great proxy for intra-personal contact but art is a reflection of life and in order to sell your artwork or your ability, someone as to respond to an aspect of your work that speaks to them. That requires you to have an understanding of the people in your world. And that doesn’t have to happen in person, it just has to happen in real time.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.gallery30south.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/popsequentialism/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kennedy-658a7a5/
- Youtube: @popsequentialism7213
- Other: www.panikcollective.com
Image Credits
©2023 Matt Kennedy. All Rights Reserved.