“I started carving creatures in March of 2019. I’m sure everyone reading this will remember, but it seemed like the world was ending. Everything was closed - except for my studio. To keep myself sane, I challenged myself to create at least one of these carvings a day, using only materials I had on hand or things I could harvest from our property in rural Vermont. I kept up this pace for several months, making well over a hundred before the end of last spring. I continued making them with less frequency through the summer and fall. Each figure represents something about the day it was carved, and the way I was feeling at the time. As a whole, the collection represents a visual journal of time, place and emotion.” matt neckers, 2.21
Matt Neckers is a visual artist who works in a variety of media including sculpture, photography, painting and installation. Matt’s work has been featured by Hyperallergic, Art New England, Vermont Public Radio, the Whitefish Review, Seven Days, and Vermont Art Guide. Take Magazine named him a “2017 Artist to Watch”. Matt received a Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, for his Mobile Museum Project, The Vermont International Museum of Contemporary Art + Design, which toured multiple locations in Vermont including the Kent Museum, an abandoned asbestos mine, a remote pond, Burlington City Arts, and the Fairbanks Museum. He also created an interactive museum inside of a 1940s refrigerator, which was shown at the Fleming Museum in 2019. In 2020 the Bennington Museum installed his work Ascension on the facade of the museum.
For his teaching, Matt was named Vermont’s 2016 Lead PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovator. This national honor is given to one educator from each state. He was named a Juried Teaching Artist by the Vermont Arts Council. He was also given a Distinguished Arts Education Leader Award by The Vermont Alliance for Arts Education (Affiliated with the Kennedy Center Alliance for Art Education).
Matt studied painting at Evergreen State College, in Olympia, WA, and received his M.Ed. Arts in Education from St. Michael’s College, in Colchester, Vermont. Matt has taught for a variety of schools including St. Michael’s College and Green Mountain Tech.
Matt lives in Northern Vermont with his family.