Matt Smalley is an experimental visual artist and musician in Queens, NY.

At UMass Lowell, his senior thesis, “Rear Projection: Film Behind the Wall” explored color psychology and liminality in late-Soviet film.  After graduating from the Honors College there with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Latin American Politics, he has been working in a number of modalities, including painting, illustration, and animation.

Much of Matt’s work has involved animation with video synthesizers, technology born out of TV studios in the ‘60s and ‘70s.  All of these pieces, both moving and still, are created by pairing antiquated technology like camcorders, CRTs, VCRs, and video synths with digital and frame-by-frame animation. Using these tool, he has gone on to work with regional bands for live concert projection and the creation of music videos.  In 2023, Black Box, a collection of many still and moving images, was shown at Gallery Once in Littleton, MA, LexArt in Lexington, MA, and The Belmont Hill School in Belmont, MA. Like all of his pieces, these were all “painted” on videotape.

As a musician, Matt has played in rock bands, jazz combos, theater pits, and orchestras across the northeast U.S. and Canada on upright and electric bass, drums, guitar, synths, and pedal steel guitar.  He currently makes music under the names Goat Motel and The Ramens.