{"id":4289,"date":"2018-10-12T15:26:25","date_gmt":"2018-10-12T19:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=4289"},"modified":"2024-05-07T13:36:36","modified_gmt":"2024-05-07T17:36:36","slug":"a-true-original","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/a-true-original\/","title":{"rendered":"A True Original"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost every day for the last 50 years, Professor Vincent DiMattio has gone into his art studio at Monmouth and made something. It may be a painting or a sculpture, a drawing or a collage. It could be playful or mysterious, sensual or haunting. Some days it may be only a few brushstrokes, others a near-finished piece. But week after week, year after year, DiMattio is there, putting the techniques that he\u2019s taught at Monmouth for the last five decades into practice himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll give it to you in one word: compulsion,\u201d says DiMattio. \u201cI have no choice\u2014I just have to keep making things. I think I\u2019ll have a sketch pad with me on my deathbed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s discipline, devotion, or, as he says, compulsion, his daily practice has resulted in a massive body of work. This semester, Monmouth is celebrating that work\u2014and the artist behind it\u2014with a retrospective exhibition<\/a>. From now through Dec. 7, roughly 500 pieces that DiMattio made during his 50 years at Monmouth are on view in three campus galleries, including the one named in his honor.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis work is simply astonishing,\u201d says Robert Rechnitz, professor emeritus of English, a longtime friend of DiMattio. \u201cIt\u2019s deeply moving and profoundly original. I don\u2019t know of anybody who works like he does\u2014and there is so much of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rechnitz\u2019s wife, Joan \u201984, \u201912HN, who has taken several courses with DiMattio, says she is particularly drawn to his sense of color. \u201cThey just look so beautiful together,\u201d she says. \u201cSome are unexpected, and sometimes they almost vibrate in a very beautiful way.\u201d<\/p>\n

DiMattio started making art as a kid in Quincy, Massachusetts, but he never thought it could become a career. He had finished high school and was playing American Legion Baseball when a friend invited him to tag along on a visit to Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. \u201cI was astounded,\u201d DiMattio remembers. \u201cThis was a place where kids could actually scribble and make things\u2014I didn\u2019t even know these art schools existed.\u201d He put together a portfolio, submitted it, and was soon an incoming freshman at MassArt.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s important for artists to be productive. This business of waiting for an idea\u2014that\u2019s a lot of crap. It\u2019s better that you do something, even if it isn\u2019t successful, that you can look at and learn from.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After an MFA from Southern Illinois University and a couple of years teaching at the University of Wisconsin, DiMattio arrived at Monmouth in 1968\u2014the height of Vietnam War protests. Although he\u2019d been hired to teach undergraduates about composition and color, he often found himself managing them outside the classroom, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m out with a megaphone trying to keep students off the street so that state troopers won\u2019t beat them over the head with clubs,\u201d he remembers of an especially eventful night. It was a new but not uncomfortable role for DiMattio, who had marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Milwaukee and whose baby son was, according to DiMattio, the youngest member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cVince was high-spirited, exploding with energy, wary of authority, and absorbed in his work,\u201d recalls Kenneth Stunkel, professor emeritus of history and a former dean of Monmouth, who still calls DiMattio a close friend. And from the time they met, it was obvious: \u201cHe was driven from within to create,\u201d says Stunkel.<\/p>\n

Soon after he arrived at Monmouth, DiMattio channeled some of that drive into giving the University its first art gallery. He found a small room on campus and helped transform it into a showcase for student and faculty work. Eventually the gallery moved into a larger space, with DiMattio still overseeing it\u2014on top of his other responsibilities. \u201cAt one time, I taught an overload, I was chair of the department, and<\/em> I ran the gallery,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of unheard of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, he kept making time for those daily studio visits. \u201cI think it\u2019s important for artists to be productive,\u201d he says. \u201cThis business of waiting for an idea\u2014that\u2019s a lot of crap. It\u2019s better that you do something, even if it isn\u2019t successful, that you can look at and learn from.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pieces on view in his 50-year retrospective are proof not only of DiMattio\u2019s dedication and productivity, but also the range of his work. \u201cThere are so many beginnings,\u201d says Bob Rechnitz. \u201cHe does not create the same things over and over. As a matter of fact, he seems constantly to be realizing new visions. And of course that\u2019s one of the appeals: How did you come up with this<\/em>? How did you dream up that<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

Phil Imbriano \u201915, who took three of DiMattio\u2019s courses, says DiMattio often invited students into his studio, which sits beside his classroom. \u201cHe\u2019d always show us what he was working on, and that passion rubbed off on me for sure,\u201d Imbriano says. \u201cWhen I\u2019d see his work, it inspired me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two are still close friends, but Imbriano admits that it wasn\u2019t an instant connection. At first he struggled with his new instructor\u2019s blunt critiques and difficult assignments. But as his own technique improved, he started to see the value in DiMattio\u2019s approach. He still remembers DiMattio telling the class that artists \u201cdon\u2019t go out every weekend to party; they stay in and work.\u201d It\u2019s a message that echoes in his head today\u2014and that keeps him committed to making his own work, even with a full-time job in graphic design.<\/p>\n

Imbriano is also one of several hundred students who have wandered through famous museums and explored new cities alongside DiMattio. After a sabbatical in Madrid for the full 1979\u201380 academic year, DiMattio came back to campus eager to give students a taste of his life-changing experience. Two years later, he led his first \u201cArt in…\u201d trip during spring break. He\u2019s now taken classes to Europe 20 times\u2014most recently, Berlin in 2017.<\/p>\n

In 2013, DiMattio\u2019s 45th year at Monmouth, a two-story art gallery in the new Joan and Robert Rechnitz Hall was dedicated as the DiMattio Gallery. He admits that the gesture brought him to tears. Now five years later, he\u2019s embracing another Monmouth milestone.<\/p>\n

\u201cMonmouth University is special in so many ways and I am so damn lucky to have spent 50 years on this campus,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve been through a lot, the school has been through a lot, and we have both survived. I\u2019m very lucky to be here and to have been here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

State of The Art<\/h2>\n

Although DiMattio insists that \u201cif I could explain everything about my work, then it\u2019s time to give it up,\u201d he walked us through the inspiration and process behind several of his series.<\/p>\n

\"A
Dream Series<\/strong>
\u201cI used to have these nightmares\u2014one almost every night. Then I started making these drawings. I\u2019d use the method of stippling\u2014a lot of little dots. I\u2019d fill the page with that and then look at those dots and find all of these creatures and strange people. I made about 60 pieces\u2014pen and ink, directly on paper\u2014that had to do with the dream series. It let out a lot of frustrations I was feeling.\u201d<\/div><\/div>
\"An
Ancient Walls<\/strong>
\u201cI\u2019ve always been in love with the written word\u2014with letters. I\u2019ve invented my own kind of calligraphy. They\u2019re invented forms and the messages have to be felt, not seen. People will come up to me and say, what does this say? I tell them that it says what you feel when you\u2019re looking at it. Of course, they have trouble understanding that sometimes. But invention is so damn important to an artist. I love ceremony, I love magic. The letters relate to a lot of that.\u201d<\/div><\/div>
\"A
Found Objects<\/strong>
\u201cThere\u2019s a real history of artists who\u2019ve shown interest in assemblages and using things that society has pretty much cast aside. That interested me. I\u2019d pick things up off the street when I was in Europe. I\u2019d buy old magazines. Then I\u2019d start to play with these things in the studio, not knowing in advance what they were going to look like. They\u2019re very spontaneous.\u201d<\/div><\/div><\/div>

 <\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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