Our Story

Our goal is to create unique works which blur the lines between art and design

Notion was founded by artist, educator, and designer Matthew Vivirito. It was build on the premise that everything made ought to have an intentionality, both in concept and design. Emerging from a passion for working with material such as wood and metal each piece is as exploration of possibilities. Often exploring new techniques and pushing previous notions of materials, each project exists all its own.

Our Founder

Matthew Vivirito received his BFA in Sculpture and BA in Art History from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2018 and his MFA from UW Madison in 2021 where he was a Kohler Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. He is currently a practicing artist based out of Milwaukee while working as instructor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

Artist Statement

I am an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator whose work focuses on the environment and functional design while exploring social, interactive, and process-based practices. I am interested in discovering ways to express emotion through crafted objects and spaces. I find value in building complex work out of the simplest of components. The installations and functional designs invite audiences to participate with the art through both their body and mind.

Having worked for artists whose work spans decades and disciplines, I continuously evolve within a unique and intuitive art practice. I explore social practices, field work, research, collaboration, and community outreach. I am fascinated by how expansive and influential art is on the world.

My latest work began with Ash trees dying from their own pandemic. The first immersive installation gave viewers an experience of being inside the grain of the tree. The wood was then repurposed into a second and third show. Each took thousands of pieces of wood to create dynamic displays of light, material, and space. By the last iteration the reused Ash had been milled down to small and delicate pieces. The metaphor embodies our effective loss on both the natural world and our most precious memories.

The connection between our internal experience and the environment are where I find desire to create. Each winter I use local lake ice and let it melt through pigment on hundreds of pages. I offer these to viewers to take as a way to bring people together and embody the altruistic gift the environment offers us. I consider my practice to be a heartfelt search for poetics, a reflective essay on my life, a cyclical history of world and self.

Contact Us

NotionDesignStudio@gmail.com