Sculpture artist Matt Clark transformed a painful experience into something beautiful — just like his art.
Raised horseback on a working ranch in southwest Utah, he was a 17-year-old rodeo star who made the National High School Finals Rodeo. But his life changed instantly and forever when he crawled under his pickup to do some repairs. The truck rolled, leaving him a quadriplegic.
Since the day 45 years ago, Matt Clark’s been told nine times that he would soon die, beginning with the devastating months in ICU and spinal rehab following his accident.
“Your only future now is to check into a rest home, and you’ll probably live three years,” he was told. But that’s not what he did.
The Messenger by Matt Clark
That grim forecast came true for the other young men in Clark’s spinal rehab clinic. “All of my roommates died within three to four years,” he says. “I was lost. I didn’t know what to do. But I first started paying attention to what not to do: I’m not gonna get addicted to painkillers. … That’s how I started to navigate a path to create a new life.”
He didn’t do it by himself. “My parents held me up through that,” says the grateful artist. “The hospital was 310 miles from home. My parents were there way more than a roommate whose mother lived 15 minutes away.”
Back at the ranch, rejecting the bleak outlook of the professionals, the Clarks created their own rehab clinic of ropes, pulleys, and weights on the back porch. “And for the next three years, all I did mostly was work out, to get as much muscle as possible.”
Before the accident, Clark had been a welder. And there sat his old welding machine. “Maybe I can figure out how to do that,” he told himself. It became part of his therapy.
Welding uses tools, but he couldn’t grip a hammer. So he created a hammer that gripped his hands. It’s a tool he continues to use to this day. “I came up with my own design; made it myself.”
Dad’s Favorite Horse, life-size by Matt Clark
Told he’d never drive again, Clark spent an hour a day for 10 months learning to lift himself into his pickup. After two more months learning to lift his wheelchair into the truck, he learned to drive with hand controls. “I was taught at an early age that there’s nobody coming to help,” he says. “So you better figure it out and get it done.”
While the doctors had given him three years to live, Clark was living on his own three years after the accident. He was working as a freelance welder, a job that often left behind a pile of scrap metal. “One day I was bored, and I see these interesting shapes,” he recalls. “I just pulled ’em out of the pile and welded them into this little dinosaur.”
“It’s just a piece of junk,” he told his mother when she stopped by, “but you know how moms are.”
“I think that’s art, and I think you should do more!” his mother insisted. She started bringing her son art books. And he’s been creating metal art ever since.
“My saviors were my mom and dad,” he says. “They were right there and kept encouraging me.”
Clark never formally studied art. But the art he creates is a reflection of his deep interest in philosophy, which began in those tough days in the hospital. An ICU nurse told her husband, a Zen master, about Clark’s plight. The Zen master communicated to Clark that, despite his dire circumstances, he would do amazing things if he could learn to be his own best friend and follow his heart.
Butterfly by Matt Clark
“That stuck in my mind,” Clark says. “To do that, you step outside of yourself. It’s like learning to take the advice you would give your best friend. You become your own coach. And I got really good at it.”
Every one of the thousands of works of art that Clark has created since is made with at least one piece of discarded metal. And many, like his life-size horses, are made of nothing but scrap. There is obvious symbolic meaning in these broken pieces, seemingly of no value, repurposed and brought back to life as fine art. It is the story of Clark’s life: “Going to the National Finals, and then, bam, I’m broken. And then the experts said: ‘You really don’t have any value anymore.’ So I have transitioned that mentality into my art.”
His work is eclectic, but horses are a favorite subject, even though it still hurts to be unable to ride. “As painful as it is to do a horse — because it’s right there in my face of what my life was supposed to be — it’s a pain I can manage how I want to by creating this form.”
Chronic pain is a constant in his life. He has endured a number of complications from his injury, some life-threatening, but his art has allowed him to navigate his incredibly challenging journey and to become a very successful professional artist. “I like the word navigating because I haven’t overcome anything,” Clark says. “I’m still just as broken as I was 45 years ago.”
Matt Clark
In spite of that, he has followed his heart and done amazing things. He has followed a positive path, expressed in a mantra-like quote on his website: “My body has been broken and may not heal, but my spirit can and will transcend my limitations.” Indeed.
Long married with a grown son, this inspiring and courageous cowboy has created a body of work that reflects his own unique voice — fittingly featured in a triumphant art show at Kayenta Art Village in Utah in February 2023 on the 45th anniversary of his accident. “My life has been tremendous suffering, ever since that day,” Clark says. “But if I follow that inner voice that’s mine, I suffered less.”
And those pieces of discarded scrap metal he transforms from junk into art? “I don’t care what their life was before. I’m gonna look at their potential to become something new… My purpose as an artist is not to create things of beauty, but to uncover essence.”
Visit the artist online at mattclarksculpture.com.
From our November/December 2024 issue.
HEADER IMAGE: Rio Bravo Steer, life-size by Matt Clark.