Featured Artist: Matti Hayes

Name: Matti Hayes

Grade: 11

Tools: White paper, black gel pen

What:  “I just take one of my black gel pens and they always turn out as these swirls, and just let it be free flowing and almost organic looking because I know when I’ve tried to make liner, geometric shapes, it just doesn’t look very sophisticated or interesting. Sometimes when I’m anxious it just comes out.  The intent is to be almost therapeutic. Sometimes I’ll just do it because I feel like getting something out.”

Began: “Honestly, a couple months ago. I made my first one when I didn’t really want to concentrate on what I had to be doing and it was just simple- my technique for doing it. So I just kept replicating it. Sometimes I do them in class because sometimes I don’t want to stop when I’m doing one. And It’s encouraging when someone looks over and is like, “Oh that’s cool” or, “That’s intricate” or, “That looks like a maze” or something, and that makes me feel good and it makes me want to keep doing them.”

Inspiration:  “I’m just really inspired by things that are naturally occurring and look really cool. Or, like in mathematics, fractals. I think those are really awesome. They’re just like shapes with a lot of different little designs inside of them.  When I’m inspired to do something it’s because I really want to sit down to work on it and that’s when I try to make them the most elaborate. When I sit down to draw one it’s not really with a purpose; I use it as an outlet. I feel like if I use other outlets I’m going to be kind of disappointed, but usually, if I need to focus on something, and I end up drawing one of my shape designs, I feel like I did something constructive. I’ve tried adding color to them, but there’s something I really like about black gel pen on white paper. Especially since I could never draw comic book looking doodles like I wanted.”