Matthew Mazzotta (born March 28, 1977) is an American social practice artist known for community engaged artworks in the public space. He describes public space as political, stating that public spaces like downtowns should not only have commercial establishments, but also include spaces where communities can come together.
He works to create public spaces that are built by the community and designed specifically for their needs, and address issues such as food deserts, community well-being, and the loss of cultural identity.
Mazzotta participated in the exhibition “PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity” at the U.S. Pavilion of the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2025.
Life and Career Mazzotta grew up in Canton, New York. He attended Oglethorpe University but dropped out after 1 year. During this time, he traveled around the United States in a van and took on jobs involving welding and fabrication. The artworks he made during this time off was what he used to apply to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received his BFA degree in 2001. Afterwards he took on carpentry work. He later completed a Master of Science in Visual Studies degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Program in Art, Culture, and Technology in 2009.
Growing up, Mazzotta spent summers in Bauline East, a small community south of St. John's on Newfoundland's Southern Shore. He credits his grandfather as an inspiration for his art-making process. His grandfather is a rural Newfoundland native, who when he needed a certain tool, would just make his own to meet his needs, such as a repair, to pick a certain fruit or to fix a motor.
Mazzotta describes skateboarding as an influence to his art practice. He likens the way he creates public art to the way he moves around the city as a skateboarder. Rather than show up to a place to install an already made artwork, he prefers generating an artwork idea through dialogue with local people. "I go into a community as an outsider, with my eyes, and just start to pick up things and talk to people," he said.
Mazzotta’s public art practice grew out of his early involvement with activism. In the 1990s, Mazzotta was affiliated with the hardcore punk scene in Atlanta, Georgia, where he protested for animal rights and environmental causes. For him, public art coincides with activism on the goal of awareness raising. “How do you get a person that doesn't care about something to walk into a conversation or into a dialogue? I use artistic sensibilities, or the privileges art gives us, in terms of capturing someone's attention,” he says. One method he employs to raise awareness is through the creation of spectacles in public space. For him, a spectacle unites people, allowing people who may have opposing viewpoints to share the same space and experience.
He was a recipient of a 2017-18 Loeb Fellowship at Harvard Graduate School of DesignMatthew Mazzotta. Loeb Fellow 2018. Harvard Graduate School of Design. Accessed August 24, 2019 and was a 2019-20 Guggenheim Fellow.
Work
Outdoor Living Room (Ongoing) The Outdoor Living Room is a community-engagement method developed by Matthew Mazzotta as an early phase of several of his public art commissions. The Outdoor Living Room is assembled in public spaces with couches, tables, chairs, rugs and lamps, as a way to invite conversation with the community for which the public artwork is designated. Mazzotta uses this method to welcome the voices and ideas of people who may not attend more formal meetings.
Mazzotta employed this method while developing his STOREFRONT THEATER project in Lyons, Nebraska. During these sessions, a Lyons resident revealed that an abandoned storefront on the town's Main Street was in fact only a freestanding façade, which inspired the STOREFRONT THEATER concept. Residents also identified a lack of activities for the town's children, which shaped the project's eventual multi-generational use. Mazzotta emphasizes that a project's success hinges on how the community will eventually adopt and use the public artwork after it is installed.
For his commission in York, Alabama, Mazzotta similarly asked local residents to bring something from their living rooms to stage an Outdoor Living Room in the middle of Avenue A. Through this discussion they identified the lack of public space in York and the abundance of abandoned buildings as pressing issues, which led to the creation of his OPEN HOUSE project.
Mazzotta has staged Outdoor Living Room sessions in several other towns and cities, including Wheaton, Maryland in May, 2015; Athens, Georgia in December, 2015 as part of the city’s development of a Public Art Master Plan led by Todd Bressi; Boise, Idaho in January, 2020 as a precursor to his project GENTLE BREEZE; Sacramento, California for his 2024 sculpture UPLIFTING EXPERIENCE; Salt Lake City, Utah in April, 2025 as part of his commission for a public artwork at Glendale Park; and Lincoln, Nebraska in September, 2025 for his commission at South Haymarket Park.
BUSYCLE (2005) The BUSYCLE was a human-powered vehicle built in 2005 by Matthew Mazzotta and fellow artist Heather Clark, designed to carry 14 passengers who collectively pedal it forward. Mazzotta and Clark are long-time friends who had both grown up in Canton, New York. The vehicle consists of 14 sets of bicycle pedals connected through a shared gearing system to a single driver's seat, who is responsible for steering and braking. The BUSYCLE touched on Mazzotta and Clark's interest in sustainable transportation. It was constructed largely from recycled and donated materials, including van flatbed sections, exercise equipment, and bed frames.
The project drew informal advice from engineers in the Netherlands and South Africa, a mechanic from Australia, a bicycle sculptor from Baltimore, as well as consultation from MIT mechanical engineering professor David Gordon Wilson. The project began in May 2005 through an Artist-in-Residence program at the Berwick Research Institute, a Boston-based artist-run organization. It was constructed at the Sparqs Industrial Arts Club in Woburn, Massachusetts, with help from a volunteer team of diverse backgrounds, including a pastry chef, a French horn player, a videographer, a physics teacher, an architect, and an engineer.
The BUSYCLE made a public appearance in Boston’s parade on September 25, 2005, as part of the city’s four-month-long celebration of its 375th birthday. After its Boston debut, the BUSYCLE traveled to different cities on a cross-country story-collecting tour ending in San Francisco. During stops, the crew invited locals to climb aboard and pedal together. Afterwards, participants were invited to record their stories, which were videotaped and shared with people at the next stop.
STEEPED IN EXPLORATION (2010) STEEPED IN EXPLORATION was a public art installation in Drachten, Netherlands that utilizes a methane digester. Mazzotta developed it as a proof of concept for his Park Spark Project, installed later in the same year. The structure consists of six curved segments that join together to form a large, seed pod-like structure about 8 feet tall. The segments are covered in reeds used to roof local houses, and they can unfold to become 6 separate seating benches, with a methane-powered heater and kettle at the center with which visitors can make tea.
As part of the activation of the artwork, Mazzotta organized an outing with local residents to forage tea ingredients in the surrounding area, drawing upon the participants’ knowledge of local plants.
The Park Spark Project (2010) The Park Spark Project was a public art installation that converted dog waste into methane gas used to fuel an old fashioned streetlamp. It was installed in September 2010 at a dog park on Pacific Street in the Cambridgeport neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was originally displayed for about a month, through September 25. Mazzotta, then a 33-year-old artist holding a master's degree in visual studies from MIT, conceived the project after seeing household methane digesters used for cooking during a trip to India.
The project drew on consultation with environmental scientist Will Brinton, who had previously advised on a similar proposed dog-waste-to-energy project in San Francisco that was never built. Mazzotta developed the first prototype in Maine with the help of Brinton, which was a metal drum with a lamp attached via a gas valve. Bringing the project to fruition required roughly seven months of navigating municipal bureaucracy: Cambridge Parks and Recreation initially rejected the proposal, and Mazzotta separately had to secure approval from the Environmental Protection Agency, the fire department, the city's Open Space Committee, and building permitting. Before Park Spark was realized in Cambridge, Mazzotta developed STEEPED IN EXPLORATION in Drachten, Netherlands as a proof of concept. This version utilized a methane digester to heat up a kettle with which visitors can make tea. The City of Cambridge ultimately approved Park Spark only as a temporary installation.
The installation consisted of an airtight underground digester tank into which dog owners deposited waste collected in biodegradable bags. Visitors turned a hand crank or wheel to stir the tank's contents, and anaerobic bacteria broke the waste down through microbial decomposition, producing methane gas. The gas runs through a pipe below the outlet tank into a converted gas lamp fixture, provided by the City of Boston, where it was burned to produce a continuous flame that lit the park. Mazzotta seeded the digester with a mixture of cow manure and unchlorinated water from the Charles River to help cultivate the methane-producing bacteria needed to process the dog waste.
During the project’s installment, it received high interaction as visitors enjoyed turning the crank mechanism. It also attracted national press attention and was featured on Wired Magazine, Discovery Channel News, and Huffington Post. It was mentioned on Season 7, Episode 110 of The Colbert Report aired on August 18, 2011. Mazzotta described the work as "an interactive urban intervention" intended to prompt reflection on waste and resources.
OPEN HOUSE (2013) OPEN HOUSE was a 2013 public art installation and transformable sculpture located at 202 Main Street in York, Alabama, between the town's post office and its main grocery store. The idea for OPEN HOUSE came out of Mazzotta’s Outdoor Living Room conversation with local residents, which identified the lack of public space in York and the abundance of abandoned buildings as longstanding issues.
OPEN HOUSE was created in collaboration with the Coleman Center for the Arts, local York residents, and a project team that included Curtis Oliveira, Jegan Vincent De Paul, and Cory Vineyard. In consultation with local residents, the project team selected one of York’s most iconic abandoned properties—a house with pink siding—to serve as the site for the installation. Residents took part in hand-demolishing the original structure before construction began, and the town's fire department separately conducted a controlled burn of the remaining debris. The project was then built on the footprint of the original house, completed roughly seven months after it began, and was formally inaugurated on June 15, 2013 by York Mayor Gena Robbins.
In its closed state, the sculpture resembles a gable roof house, reusing the original building's pink exterior siding along with salvaged timber boards and window frames.Its foundation was built from reclaimed railroad ties, and it incorporates custom-fabricated industrial hinges that allow the structure to physically unfold into an open-air theater with five rows of stadium seating, accommodating approximately 100 people facing an open performance area.