Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Anzak.
Matt, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born in Brownsville, Texas, but my mother and I moved to Irving when I was very young after my father had passed away. Growing up, I was greatly influenced by my grandparents, who stressed creativity through music and art; and for much of my younger years, I assumed creative expression was a normal part of life. Of course, growing up in Texas in the ’80s, it became obvious that not everyone saw the arts from that perspective. Thankfully, Texas has come a long way since then; and I have been proud to be a part of the blossoming North Texas art scene for more than 20 years.
In retrospect, I began to truly see the world through the perspective of an artist during my first international travel experiences in the early ’90s. In 1992, I participated in the Eastern Washington University Russian Art and Architecture course in collaboration with the People to People Student Ambassador program, which allowed me unprecedented access to travel and study within the post-Soviet era Russia. At age 16, this was a mind-blowing experience; and I was soon hooked on the idea of being a traveling artist. During the next year, I enrolled in a program with an environmental group, which enabled me to explore live volcanoes as well as remote parts of the Costa Rican rain forest.
In one scientific observation point deep in the jungle, I went up in one of the first canopy webs, over one hundred feet above waterfalls; and I experienced the greatest connection with nature of my young life. Soon afterwards, I began to study Tibetan Buddhism at a Buddhist center in South Dallas, after being influenced by the Beatles song “Tomorrow Never Knows;” and when I moved to Denton to study at the University of North Texas, I joined a Zen Buddhist group and expanded my studies into Taoism as well. The influence of art and nature, coupled with an opening awareness of Self through eastern philosophy, proved to shape the course of my life and career.
As an undergraduate in Drawing and Painting at UNT, I spent a great deal of time exploring the spiritually potent landscapes of the Southwestern US; and I was inspired to incorporate multicultural symbols and mythologies, as well as sacred geometry into my mix of a figure, landscape and abstract artwork. I started to exhibit my art in Deep Ellum in the late ’90s; and I was fortunate to have Frank Campagna as a mentor, working with him on various projects, including at the Gypsy Tea Room, the Deep Ellum Center for the Arts, the Tunnel Works Murals on Good Latimer, and later at his gallery, Kettle Art.
By the early 2000s, I had decided to branch out and exhibit my artwork in other parts of the US and eventually in international venues. I finally dropped out of grad school at UNT, where I was studying Printmaking and African Percussion; and I became a full-time international artist, exhibiting my creations in art venues throughout the United States, as well as in England, France, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, Israel and Australia. I worked with so many amazing artists during this time, and even opened a gallery with some of them in Paris as the artist group “Ivy Paris.” In 2009, while participating in an art show at the Castle Estense in Farrara, Italy, I met my future wife Svetlana and fell in love. We traveled to other parts of Italy, and over the next two years, we met up in Russia, where she lived, then Spain, France and Holland before I was finally able to convince her to join me in North Texas.
After many years of making contacts in the broader art world, I had the opportunity to embrace a new role in the Dallas art scene, starting an international art program in a gallery venue in the Dallas Design District. My first project as a curator in 2011 brought 40 artists’ works from 17 countries to Dallas as part of the International Biennale Artists program, which I later produced in Miami with 56 artists from 21 countries. I worked with additional galleries in the Design District and promoted numerous DFW artists alongside regional and international creatives in around four dozen exhibitions, which also included live performances, lectures, and workshops. I also co-curated gallery exhibitions in Austria and in Israel, where I showcased works of 16 Texas artists in Tel Aviv, an exhibition covered by the Jerusalem Post.
In addition to working with artists and musicians from over 30 countries, I have also worked with cultural groups and institutions, including the Dallas Holocaust Museum and the Texas-Israel Chamber of Commerce, the Texas Muslims Women’s Foundation and the Islamic Art Revival Series, the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, Bhavan Australia, ProArt and Contraria Arte in Italy, and Artura Art in Israel. For many of these projects, I was blessed to have my amazing wife and muse Svetlana Anzak by my side, traveling to over a dozen countries in our 11 years together. Svetlana and I have been working on numerous photographic projects that tend to focus on more spiritual aspects of creativity in amazing settings, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. In late 2019, we were fortunate to be able to return to Italy, where our story began, before the Covid-19 shutdown.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
This life has definitely been an adventure, and I have learned to roll with whatever comes my way. I have often run into logistical issues at many points during both my travels and in producing events. My first trip alone was to Spain in 1998, and I had more art supplies with me than money or even common sense, but I learned that being an artist in Europe opens up a lot of doors. There have been many times where I was painting in the square of some foreign town and had locals stop to meet me, and then offer me a meal or even a place to stay; but there have also been times where I would just have to find shelter for my broke artist self under a bridge, in an abandoned building, on a train, or “illegally” camping. I did a lot of crazy things when I was younger that I cannot imagine doing now; but I also met amazing people and had so many unique experiences.
As an event coordinator, money has always been an issue as well; and it is still a struggle to find sponsors, especially in the current socio-political climate. As an artist, I was crazy; but as a curator, I found that artists like me were very frustrating to work with on projects. That is what I get for being a Gemini! Dealing with shipping and customs is tough, but as an artist, I would try to find ways around it, such as building modular artworks that fit inside each other like Matryoshka dolls, wrapped up in my clothes and checked on the airplane. As a curator, sometimes art from other countries did not get through customs in time; and I just needed to figure something else out. In the art world, creative differences are common; and sometimes, those issues can be harder to resolve. The best you can do at times is to just reset and move on, and it is also a really good idea to find ways to come with stress in a healthy and productive way.
Please tell us about Art Nomadic.
Our event production company and artist collective, Art Nomadic, is the culmination of my experiences in the art world; and I see it as unique in that it embraces art as more than just entertainment but rather as something more wholistic, with its roots going back for many years. In 2012, I met Israeli curator Doron Polak while exhibiting in Prague; and I was intrigued by the avant-garde nature of his curator endeavors. We began to collaborate on several projects, and I was inspired to incorporate more existential and spiritual elements into my productions. That was not always a good fit in the for-profit gallery scene, so Svetlana and I started discussing the creation of our own pop-up event company, incorporating our expansive network of local and international talent to have more freedom over the content of the productions.
Around that time, Svetlana became the event coordinator at a community center and yoga studio in Denton; and we began to incorporate yoga, meditation, sound healing, live music, and art. We included workshops in energy work, creativity, and Ayurvedic nutrition and healing, and proceeds from events were donated to local causes. The pieces started to come together for our Art Nomadic concept; so, we started finding like-mined creatives to put the plan into motion. During my curator days in the Design District, I met composer Jeffrey Gascon Bello, with whom Svetlana and I began to meet with for meditative jam sessions and formed a spiritual bond together. So in 2019, we started to develop the concept of Art Nomadic with Jeffrey, focusing on the three main principles of Creativity, Spirituality, and Community; and we collaborated with multi-media artist, Osei Ovid and musician and community organizer, Reid Robinson on projects, including presentations at the Ginger Fox Gallery and at the Unity of Dallas Fellowship Hall with the Sangeet Millennium Ensemble and other international musicians. We are continuing to work on projects for this year despite COVID setbacks and are pleased to be collaborating with Amie Maciszewski on some beautiful concepts in the works.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
In my experience, the journey becomes at least as important as the destination; and I approach my art process in the same way. There have definitely been some miss-steps, and I can always strive to be better at what I do. I am not the most organized person, and I have often taken on too many projects and felt overwhelmed. There have been times where it would have been better to say “no,” but it just feels so good to say “yes!” I could have been better at delegating responsibilities to others rather than trying to do so much myself, and I am learning to be more trustworthy with experience. I also have more people around me now, who have stood the test of time and are reliable, so I can focus on certain objectives and consolidate my energy.
In the past, I have allowed negativity, ego, and self doubt to become obstacles; but meditation and yoga have served to be very cohesive life tools for me over the years. I started Kundalini yoga a little over a year ago, and it has really helped me to connect the dots and to put my life experiences into perspective. Maybe I could have started this discipline earlier; but then again, I believe that many things in life happen at the right time when we are ready for that piece of the puzzle. In short, I have to always make sure to go back to my mantra: “art is life and life is art.”
Pricing:
- Fine art giclee and photographic prints start at $300, original artwork starts at$500
- Professional art and photography modeling ranges from $20/hour to $100/hour
Contact Info:
- Address: 2201 Parkside Dr
Denton, TX 76201 - Website: www.artnomadic.com
- Phone: 214-587-3135
- Email: mattanzak@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/art.nomadic/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/artnomads/
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