The photo here of artist Matthew Krawcheck may look like someone from another world, but this is how he creates his art. He’s wearing a kinetic (motion) projector he created in order to enable him to project images onto walls, ceilings and screens that he painted on transparent film.
Born in Miami, Florida, Krawcheck attended Magnet Arts elementary, middle school and high school. He said many students at the high school went on to get degrees at the Kansas City Art Institute.
He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from KCAI in 2006 and his Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011.
It was while he was at KCAI that he started building hand-cranked projectors. He said the art institute had a very loose definition of painting, so this was well within the type of art they encouraged.
In 2017, he was awarded a spot in the 2017-18 Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Residency Program in Kansas City, Missouri. He has used this residency to explore ways to combine drawing, painting and kinetic sculpture (the hand-crank devices he builds to project his work).
“It works similar to a slide projector, except I’m drawing and painting on a piece of transparency and then projecting that,” said the 35-year-old artist. “It’s another format to experience a drawing or a painting. The kinetic part, the part that moves, comes in where you wind the drawing through the machine and the images move across the screen.
“When I create overlapping projections and ghostly afterimages, it creates a sense of depth through overlap.”
Krawcheck said his main goal in constructing his own projectors is to protest against digital presentation technology and re-envision drawing as a media of mass communication.
When he gives lectures and presentations to classes and has to project his art digitally, he said it breaks his heart to see the digital destroy the image.
“You lose a lot of the nuances and subtleties through the medium of digital, which is not suited well for a lot of things,” he said.
Krawcheck said he loves to draw and paint, especially portraits and designs for something he wants to build, but it’s stressful for him when it comes to displaying, storing and protecting a painting or drawing because you have to frame it, matte it, transport it and store it somewhere.
So he turned to crank projectors that have rolls of transparent acetate film where the drawing is on the acetate. It gets wound up and protected inside the machine. He doesn’t have to worry about how his art is going to be stored, protected or displayed.
“My favorite challenges in drawing and painting are being able to depict people and space and to create an environment,” he said. “Over the years I’ve experimented with different ways of projecting things and with the latest projector I’m building in my studio I use a Fresnel lens from an overhead projector, which allows me to project a much larger image.
“It allows me to have a strip of film that’s 10 inches tall. I could do a drawing at 10 inches tall on a potentially hundreds of feet wall.”
So how do you sell art that’s meant to be displayed by a projector? You don’t. Krawcheck said he has sold a handful of paintings and drawings over the years, but mainly earns his living as an art teacher. He is currently teaching a portrait class at Johnson County Community College.
He said he has done a lot of paintings and drawings on canvas and pieces of paper that are not projectable, nor are they on show.
“My dream is to create a whole body of work that I can project so I don’t have to go places and be asked to show my art and be heartbroken when the image is distorted by digital technology,” he said. “I have my own projector, I have my own projectable artwork and I can reclaim the ownership of the way it looks to people.”
The portraits Krawcheck has done are always painted from live models. And he uses models in his class at the community college.
“I love painting from life and from observation because you have to interpret something three dimensional onto a two dimensional surface and that forces you to become inventive and creative in ways you don’t have to if you’re simply drawing from a photograph,” he said.
Krawcheck uses graphite, charcoal, colored pencils and some mixed media for his drawings. He paints with oil and acrylic.
He said he hopes people will enjoy interacting with the kinetic sculptures he’s built with the moving parts and be able to enjoy having a non-digital experience with artwork.
He said children in particular enjoy interacting with all of his projectors. He has even let them make their own drawings on the film and project them. Seeing their drawings projected has inspired him to create projectors that are more accessible and kid friendly.
“I want people to experience drawing in a different way; I want people to think of drawing as not just something enjoyed only by people who choose to visit a gallery,” he said. “A drawing can be a very powerful tool of communication and that’s why I’m projecting it. I want lots of people to see it; I want it to be big.
“Drawing is the most autobiographical form of expression that I know and I want to share that with people; I want people to become inspired.”
As an Orthodox Jew, Krawcheck is shomer Shabbos. He will be attending the Open Studios event, but not until the end of Shabbat. He plans to spend Friday night in the Power and Light District so he can walk to the event Saturday night.
Krawcheck and his wife Sarah are members of Congregation BIAV and they live in Overland Park with their 2-year-old daughter Bernice.
To see some of Krawcheck’s works, visit his website at mattkrawcheck.com.
Open Studios event
Charlotte Street’s Studio Residency welcomes the public to its annual Open Studios event at Town Pavilion. Visitors are free to go into the artists’ studios for a behind-the-scenes view of the Studio Residency Program.
Meet all 32 artists currently in residence, learn more about their work and processes, attend live music and dance performances, readings, exhibitions, activities, talks, sales and more. All events are free and open to the public.
The event will take place from 3 to 10 p.m. Saturday, April 21, at Charlotte Street’s Town Pavilion Studios, 1100 Walnut Street, Sixth Floor, Kansas City, Missouri.