Matt Chenoweth

My name is Matt Chenoweth. I am a ceramic artist from Nashville Tennessee. Clay is my passion and the process of making ceramic art drives me to create new and unique objects. I have a wife named Bethany and two boys named Augustine, and Linus. My family is my biggest inspiration and they inspire me to be a better person and artist everyday. My first formal encounter with making art was a photography class in high school. This class was the only way i got through high school, and changed my opinion of education forever. I graduated and attended Nashville State Community College where I received an associates degree in photography. After determining that I would like to have a bachelors degree, I went to Belmont University. After switching majors from music business to chemistry I took a ceramics class as an elective and found the true reason I went to school. I graduated from Belmont with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, but I felt like I was just gaining the understanding of clay that I wanted. I decided to try and go to graduate school for ceramics but I felt the portfolio from my undergraduate work was not adequate to compete in the limited number of spaces in MFA programs. I went to the Appalachian Center for Crafts where, I met my beautiful wife, and immersed myself in the ceramic studio for two years learning from trial and error. With an updated portfolio I applied to graduate school only to get rejected from every school. I took almost a year off, out of the clay studio and landed in Indianapolis  where bethany and I were married. Not to be discouraged from pursuing my studies I applied to graduate school again. This time a week after my honeymoon I found out about acceptance into the MFA program at Indiana State University. During the summer before I started school my wife informed me that we were going to have a baby. This was good but scary news. We were about to move to a small town and I was going to go to school, this was going to be interesting. Through my experiences at Indiana State University I was able to fully engage with the processes of making art with clay. I oversaw the operations of the ceramic studio and taught classes in clay and three dimensional design while developing a comprehensive body of work. During the second of a three year program my wife told me she was expecting again. The pressure to finish my thesis work was immense and when I graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree I felt like I had climbed a mountain. The experience was incredible and I met and worked with some very talented clay artists. Now that I have finished school I want to teach and give back some of the knowledge I gained through my professors and personal experiences. I want to inspire people to love and create art.