We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Matthew Shelton a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Matthew, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

I had the mixed blessing of growing up in South Carolina, first in Gaffney, then high school way down in the low country of Allendale County. (Gaffney is where Frank Underwood was from on “House of Cards”……And Allendale is just 20 minutes up the road from the Murdaugh Murders, if that gives any point of reference for people).

My father was an English professor with a focus on southern American literature, and my mother was a speech therapist. We were raised to live practically and responsibly, but also with a very healthy appreciation of the arts. There were art books always around, and I slowly and organically learned quite a bit of art history just by virtue of my surroundings.

My siblings and I weren’t “spoiled” by any stretch, but were solidly encouraged with art and piano lessons in my early years, and eventually guitar lessons in high school. My older sister Julie went on to major in piano and organ music, and the sound of her practicing filled the house daily, creating a feeling of vitality and exploration and creative discipline that I’ve only come to fully appreciate in recent years. I’ve grown to love the sound of people practicing/rehearsing music more and more over the years.

The culture outside of our household wasn’t always very encouraging, but did instill some sense of reality about pursuing the arts. Likewise, while my parents have been unfailingly encouraging of my creative pursuits, they never shied away from the real world difficulties of making your living this way, and this “grounding” sensibility from both the larger culture I grew up in and my family has probably saved me more than once from financial ruin or stupid risks during some manic creative outburst. To put it more simply: you’re not gonna get rich/famous, so be thrifty and smart about things.

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 am currently focused on video work, but continue to work in several mediums, including musical performance and my ongoing lightbox creations.

I attended Berry College (Rome, GA) for 3 semesters, before moving to Cincinnati and graduating from the Art Academy of Cincinnati with a focus on painting. My work in those years was influenced by everything from classical academic art, abstract expressionism, pop art, etc. etc. My feelings about the notion of “academic art” in today’s world are still unresolved, but I can safely say that I tried everything I could get my hands on, rarely finished anything, but certainly learned a lot in the process.

I experienced a predictable period of burn-out and economic difficulty following college, and spent a few years focused on writing and recording music, under my own name and the band Me or the Moon, which I started with Victor Strunk.

Shortly after turning 30, I returned to visual art, first with a series of paintings called “Women and Kitties”, and soon after I began my lightboxes, which I continue to this day.

There have been numerous music projects centered around my songwriting over the years (MShelton & the Cat Lovers, Picnic, Pink Tomb, Me or the Moon). I continue to perform solo on guitar and mbira (african thumb piano), and have a trio called ExtraOcular that is performing sporadically and recording soon. I have a standing gig at The Comet in the Northside neighborhood of Cincinnati, and play there every third Thursday.

I spent ten years living in Chicago starting in 2010, and began teaching myself various video software programs in 2016, and my time and efforts have been dominated by that medium ever since. I have several music videos that I have made for various artists, including Tal National (Niger), Mucca Pazza (Chicago), and Foxy Shazam (Cincinnati), among others.

My video efforts have been heavily influenced by my years as a painter, as well as the irresistible opportunities for surrealism, psychedelia and mind-bending effects that digital art offers.

In 2022, I completed my first feature length film, “Mushrooms of Western Kentucky and Further Meditations”. It is a highly abstract film of natural and industrial imagery, designed to be “live scored” by musicians who improvise their parts in response the film during screenings.

I currently live with my partner (cellist Nora Barton) in Dayton, Kentucky. We are next door to The Lodge Ky, a multi-purpose art space and recording studio. The life-style shift from Chicago to Dayton has been a very mixed bag, but our proximity to this vibrant and endlessly inspiring space has been wonderful.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Specifically, probably not, but generally speaking: yes.

The dangers of being pretentious or grandiose when answering a question like this make me cringe, but I’ll give it a try…

I mostly do these things as some effort to inject a sense of mystery and magic into the world, first for myself, and ultimately for whatever audience my work finds.

My songwriting tends to dig in to feelings of loneliness, romance, hopelessness, giddy optimism, sexual excitement, and depression……not necessarily in that order. Songwriting is a venue to absolutely wallow in the mess of life, and hopefully create something that makes people feel less lonely in their own clumsy personal lives, and maybe even discover a space where these messy emotional events can be sublimated into something universal.

My visual art aims more directly at the mystery/magic, and hopefully leaves some viewers more inspired by the potential of the world around them. The visceral impact of my lighbox art’s optical patterns, combined with the painstaking handcraft, aim to inspire and shake the viewer out of the seemingly inevitable boredom and detachment of daily life these days.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Undoubtedly. the people I have met and places I’ve managed to go as a direct result of my work.

I grew up with the commonly held notion of getting a “big break” someday (and I’ll admit: I still do. I have to!), but these “breaks” haven’t come in the forms I would have expected.

In Chicago, I was never approached by a cigar-smoking record executive or gallery-owner who whisked me off to LA for a whirlwind through the industry meat grinder. Instead, I met a warehouse manager in my neighborhood who gave me a job with the life-changing perk of having a massive and private studio all to myself, in lieu of any benefits or job security.

Another example: One night around 2006, I was playing yet another night of songs at Kaldi’s Coffeehouse, for a paltry audience of 3 people. Turns out, one of those people ran one of Cincinnati’s all-time greatest DIY venues, and not long after, he was having me open for national acts in front of respectable-sized audiences.

Sharing music shows with friends and heroes (not mutually exclusive groups, even more so as the years have gone by) can be rewarding beyond anything I would have imagined.  Collaboration in art OR music is so rewarding, and leads to a feeling of “making a life for yourself”, even if you aren’t always “making a living”.  From the outside, the entire creative endeavor can appear to be extremely individualistic and blatantly ambition-oriented, but the sharing of stages with artists takes on a supportive and communal aspect that I’m appreciating more and more with each year.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.FlexYourLoveMuscles.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/flexyourlovemuscles
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/FlexYourLoveMuscles/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/flexyourlovemuscles
• Other: https://www.vimeo.com/flexyourlovemuscles https://www.tiktok.com/@flexyourlovemuscles https://matthewshelton.bandcamp.com/ https://meorthemoon.bandcamp.com/album/me-or-the-moon

Image Credits
Individual credits should be attached to file names, but here is backup: Clown portrait: Scott Beseler Lightbox collection and Pic with Nora Barton (cello): Jacob Hand Album art drawing: Matt Kinder Mshelton portrait (film photo) (first upload) : Nikita Gross