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Matthew Thurber was born in Washington State in 1977 where he lived on an island and made comics and zines and collaborative videos with friends. He moved to New York City in 1996 to attend The Cooper Union.
After graduating art school he returned to comics and self-publishing. His work appeared in The Ganzfeld, Paper Rodeo, and Kramers Ergot. The comic book 1-800-MICE appeared from 2007-2010 and collected into a book in 2011 by PictureBox. followed by INFOMANIACS in 2013. Art Comic was released as a comic series by Swimmers Group and as a collection in 2018 by Drawn & Quarterly. Mr Colostomy, a collection of daily comic strips, was released in 2022.
Thurber's video and animation includes:
Fleegix, 2019, a 16mm feature, toured with live narration
The Sea Masons, 2021, a 16mm nautical horror-phantasy;
How The Dog Learned Perspective, 2021; animation film made on index cards
Mumblecore Musical, 2020, a situationist musical shot on hi-8 video
Ecto Petrol Patrol, 2018, a hyper-compressed hand drawn animation
Moon Tube, 2010, a series of short films, each made in one day.
Thurber exhibited with William Wegman in 2017 in a two person show of drawings including collaborations, at teenparty.biz, a Brooklyn apartment gallery, during which he tried to prank Wegman into believing that Thurber had accidentally caught his drawings on fire, but Wegman was not fooled.
Thurber's Mouse Maze, 2016, is a permanent tile mosaic installation in PS35Q, Jamica Queens. He painted murals for John Ashbery Presents at Loretta Howard Gallery in 2013. His installations and drawings have been exhibited at Southfirst Gallery and Weird Things in Toronto.
As a curator and educator Thurber attempts to help unseen or overlooked areas of culture become more visible, and to teach lo-fi and empowering techniques. He curated the Sweet 16 Cinema Club in 2018 in Catskill NY, which was devoted to showing analog film projection. The Magic Floot, an annual animation festival, promotes the concept of the handmade animated film, and was shown at Superchief, Tomato House and Brooklyn Fire Proof. Thurber was a co-curator of the artist run Tomato House gallery from 2012-2015, along with Rebecca Bird. He currently teaches traditional animation and comics at Queens College. He is the editor of numerous zines including Quaranzine, a "psychic emergency newspaper" produced in response to the Covid pandemic.
Thurber's practice has always incorporated performance and theater. His first production, for a final project at Cooper Union, was a musical about steamboats called Condensation. He wrote and performed a vampire musical while at Chelsea College in London, and a musical seance at American Fine Arts gallery in 2000. He performed as Furniture with Peter Schuette which evolved into Soiled Mattress and the Springs, a punk muzak band active 2005-2008, that performed and toured extensively. Meanwhile, Thurber created music and performance as Ambergris, deploying lo-fi multi media narrative spectacles in over 100 shows beginning in 2003. He utilized hand drawn scrolls in particular and also toured with a small scroll contraption inspired by John Banvard's river panoramas of the 19th century.
Mrs William Horsley is the name given to a puppet theater which expanded into a film studio or narrative practice creating any and all sort of time based works. Thurber's olfactory performance dressed as a giant nose in 2015 resulted in his being banned from a Chicago club. Thurber also has performed with Brian Belott since 2010, sometimes billed as Court Stenographer and Young Sherlock Holmes Jr, in an ongoing exploration of musical speech and gesture, humor and the absurd. They have performed at London's Serpentine Gallery, Canada Gallery, the NADA art fair, Warby Parker eyeglass store, and many other venues. The duo was in residency at the Watermill Center in Feb. 2020 working on a musical about children's scribbles and the educator Rhoda Kellogg.
As of 2022 Thurber lives in Brooklyn, NY and continues to work on animation, drawings, performance, film, and comics.
VIMEO PAGE
PATREON
INSTAGRAM
Matthew Thurber was born in Washington State in 1977 where he lived on an island and made comics and zines and collaborative videos with friends. He moved to New York City in 1996 to attend The Cooper Union.
After graduating art school he returned to comics and self-publishing. His work appeared in The Ganzfeld, Paper Rodeo, and Kramers Ergot. The comic book 1-800-MICE appeared from 2007-2010 and collected into a book in 2011 by PictureBox. followed by INFOMANIACS in 2013. Art Comic was released as a comic series by Swimmers Group and as a collection in 2018 by Drawn & Quarterly. Mr Colostomy, a collection of daily comic strips, was released in 2022.
Thurber's video and animation includes:
Fleegix, 2019, a 16mm feature, toured with live narration
The Sea Masons, 2021, a 16mm nautical horror-phantasy;
How The Dog Learned Perspective, 2021; animation film made on index cards
Mumblecore Musical, 2020, a situationist musical shot on hi-8 video
Ecto Petrol Patrol, 2018, a hyper-compressed hand drawn animation
Moon Tube, 2010, a series of short films, each made in one day.
Thurber exhibited with William Wegman in 2017 in a two person show of drawings including collaborations, at teenparty.biz, a Brooklyn apartment gallery, during which he tried to prank Wegman into believing that Thurber had accidentally caught his drawings on fire, but Wegman was not fooled.
Thurber's Mouse Maze, 2016, is a permanent tile mosaic installation in PS35Q, Jamica Queens. He painted murals for John Ashbery Presents at Loretta Howard Gallery in 2013. His installations and drawings have been exhibited at Southfirst Gallery and Weird Things in Toronto.
As a curator and educator Thurber attempts to help unseen or overlooked areas of culture become more visible, and to teach lo-fi and empowering techniques. He curated the Sweet 16 Cinema Club in 2018 in Catskill NY, which was devoted to showing analog film projection. The Magic Floot, an annual animation festival, promotes the concept of the handmade animated film, and was shown at Superchief, Tomato House and Brooklyn Fire Proof. Thurber was a co-curator of the artist run Tomato House gallery from 2012-2015, along with Rebecca Bird. He currently teaches traditional animation and comics at Queens College. He is the editor of numerous zines including Quaranzine, a "psychic emergency newspaper" produced in response to the Covid pandemic.
Thurber's practice has always incorporated performance and theater. His first production, for a final project at Cooper Union, was a musical about steamboats called Condensation. He wrote and performed a vampire musical while at Chelsea College in London, and a musical seance at American Fine Arts gallery in 2000. He performed as Furniture with Peter Schuette which evolved into Soiled Mattress and the Springs, a punk muzak band active 2005-2008, that performed and toured extensively. Meanwhile, Thurber created music and performance as Ambergris, deploying lo-fi multi media narrative spectacles in over 100 shows beginning in 2003. He utilized hand drawn scrolls in particular and also toured with a small scroll contraption inspired by John Banvard's river panoramas of the 19th century.
Mrs William Horsley is the name given to a puppet theater which expanded into a film studio or narrative practice creating any and all sort of time based works. Thurber's olfactory performance dressed as a giant nose in 2015 resulted in his being banned from a Chicago club. Thurber also has performed with Brian Belott since 2010, sometimes billed as Court Stenographer and Young Sherlock Holmes Jr, in an ongoing exploration of musical speech and gesture, humor and the absurd. They have performed at London's Serpentine Gallery, Canada Gallery, the NADA art fair, Warby Parker eyeglass store, and many other venues. The duo was in residency at the Watermill Center in Feb. 2020 working on a musical about children's scribbles and the educator Rhoda Kellogg.
As of 2022 Thurber lives in Brooklyn, NY and continues to work on animation, drawings, performance, film, and comics.
VIMEO PAGE
PATREON