I live in the shadow of a small misty mountain near the sea, where I engage artistic, spiritual, and mundane practices that deepen my relationship with land, water, plants, animals, and other beings. These practices are rooted in learning through conversation, meditation, walking, and research to cultivate a deep looking and listening. I often feel I am most myself when on a long quiet walk, listening to the wind through pine trees, beholding a moss covered rock, or saying hello to the moon.
Matt Shaw lives on the Blue Hill peninsula where he works as an artist, teacher, and bookseller. He is also caretaker of five acres of forest, meadow, and wetland along Route 15 where he makes his home. A member of the Morgan Bay Zendo and Zen DownEast, he is a student of Diane Shoshin Fitzgerald in the combined lineage that derives from Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett and Robert Aitken Roshi.
Born and raised in Poughkeepise, New York he first came to Maine in 2007 to attend College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. After earning his BA in Human Ecology from COA he enrolled in a year of the college’s Masters program before moving to the University of Illinois at Chicago. At UIC he was part of a small interdisciplinary program of artists and earned earned his MFA in Moving Image in 2014. He has been back in Maine since 2017, working at College of the Atlantic and Blue Hill Books.
His work has been by supported by LEF Foundation, Maine Arts Commission, Arteles Creative Center, the Anahata Foundation, a Flaherty Film Seminar Fellowship, and the Kindling Fund.
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P.O. Box 781 Blue Hill, ME 04614
mshaw410(at)pm(dot)me