Dr. Cori Matyas
Geoscientist and Visual Artist
I convey scientific knowledge about Earth systems through sculpture.
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The transfer of energy through conduction or convection (currents) requires a medium as does changing phase from solid to liquid to gas and back. Similarly, artworks transmit ideas and the energy of creation.
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Humans have developed materials and energy transfer methods that enhance our lives yet devastate the planet. We must appreciate nature's beauty as we face a daunting future with issues such as climate change and pollution.
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Email: cjmatyas@hotmail.com
Instagram: cirrusmetals
Recent Sculptures
Steel provides a rigid framework, an endo or exoskeleton upon which more delicate materials can take flight. Clay represents the solid earth over which water travels on its infinite journey. Fibers from recycled paper pay homage to trees which provide oxygen, water, nutrients, shelter, and a bridge from Earth to sky upon which to dream.
Metals
Full view: Steel tree with ceramic spiral leaves imprinted with Braille letters
Detail from above looking down showing steel branches that were hand-threaded and ceramic spiral leaves carrying Braille messages attached with hex nuts
Silhouette of ceramic spiraling leaves made from paper clay mounted with hex nuts on a steel sapling with base wrapped in burlap.
Full view: Steel tree with ceramic spiral leaves imprinted with Braille letters
Breathing Braille
2025, steel, paper clay, burlap
The first in a series of four saplings sprouting ceramic leaves that spiral towards the sky. Their true colors are poking through the green underglaze and they carry messages in Braille in a branched pattern that begins with Breathe, which dives into Circulate, Deep, Inhale, Reflex, Undulate,
​Working with paper clay incorporates trees into the telling of their story through ceramics, lending strength to these delicate objects. To counteract this fragility and ease the grief that follows when a ceramic sculpture breaks, I also incorporate metal as a framework upon which ceramic objects are affixed. This brings peace to the process of allowing ceramic objects to complete a cycle from formation to destruction as the core remains, ready to support the next crop of leaves that will emerge in the spring.
Weeping Beech of Knowledge
2024, steel, paper, aluminum wire, cloth
Trees provide oxygen and water to help us breathe and moisten our bodies. The weeping beech is associated with knowledge and healing. The base was created from found steel and the leaves primarily from recycled paper. They progress from images to written words to symbols. They lose their innocent green as knowledge is gained, yet show their true colors at the end. The breath of rebirth amongst winds of change can be heard.
Energized Time Frame
2024, Steel
Returning to art after a career as a scientist has infused a new rhythm into my life. I use metalworking to connect my inner and outer strengths – my endo and exoskeletons. I felt a warm wavy whirl after an empowering day in the shop that inspired this piece. The frame has a symmetrical hourglass shape encompassed by cyclic arrows, signifying the breaking of boundaries yet maintaining a strong core. The arrows indicate the way forward even if it might seem backwards. Wavy and straight bars represent dynamic and restful patterns that alternate throughout our lives.
Leaving Scars
2024, steel and clay
Leaves allow trees to breathe and also shade the trunk, which can be scarred by natural or human influences. One tree supports another bearing deep scars, with branches opening to let the story flow as the leaves then complete their lifecycle and fall to the earth, reflecting ghosts of their former selves against the sky. Patterns of bark, veins, shadows, and motion tell this story. This piece can be arranged so that the trees support each other arm-in-arm or back-to-back although there, they can never share an embrace.
A-New-Meter
2023, steel and clay
As an atmospheric scientist, I record cycles of weather. An anemometer indicates speed as wind moves the cups and the vane marks wind direction. Rain gauges measure water. Here, I physically and conceptually change the routines of these instruments. The cups are turned to collect water instead of wind. Creating them with clay adds weight and grounds them to Earth. Each cup has ridges to pattern the water flow until it runs out the bottom. The ears of the wind vane receive the messages carried by the air and condense them into water that flows through the ridges and drips into the funnels. The vane and funnels rotate about the pole, revealing the patterns of energy that surround us.
Patina of Breath
2022, bronze, wood, fibers
Sharing ideas creates a guiding light that is essential to our survival. Yet it has become rarer for two people or sides to come together. This communication device condenses ideas that emerge as breath, protecting them from outside influences as they flow in the troughs towards the bronze mixing vessel where they merge. Bronze dust particles are nuclei that facilitate condensation and allow ideas to exist in gas, liquid, and solid states. The soft filters are warmly-colored and the intricate tension they create is released right before the ideas merge just as during intimate conversation. It is scaled to the height of each participant’s face when sitting in a chair across the width of a conference table. Thus, a respectful distance is maintained and eye contact can be avoided if desired, allowing participants to feel safe in their personal space yet receive fulfillment in a touchless embrace of spiritual connection.
Ceramics
Ceramic tree filled with leaves to blend with the ground
tree with waves of energy connecting it to the ground
Ceramic tree with waves of energy connecting to the ground
Ceramic tree filled with leaves to blend with the ground
2025, clay, speaker
This ceramic tree stump is energized through 400+ waves traveling up from the ground and moving inside of it. A deep voice is audible, speaking of transformation and positive changes. It serves as a portal connecting two places in time, keeping the best of the past with us in the present. The body can hold multiple souls.
Awakened Tree
rings on display with the record player, audio is included and the record player spins
symmetrical arrangement and view from higher up looking down to see the ring on the record player
installation in the corner of the gallery under the windows
rings on display with the record player, audio is included and the record player spins
​Protecting Climate Records: Tree Rings
2025 ceramics, record player, gauze, filing cabinet, speaker
Trees have been recording the climate long before humans invented instruments for this purpose. The light-colored rings represent spring and early summer growth, and dark rings represent growth in the late summer and fall. Ring thickness indicates whether ideal temperature and moisture conditions existed that year for growth. Given our current “climate”, it is imperative to preserve these records. This piece shows the cataloging and protecting of those records by hiding them in plain sight in a filing cabinet filled with protective gauze.
ceramic bowls melting under a heat lamp during climate change
Night time photo of the ceramic bowls melting under the heat lamps
Carved Antarctica pieces taken out of the bowls
ceramic bowls melting under a heat lamp during climate change
Sea Level Rise Antarctica
2024 clay
Climate models are run with four representative concentration pathways (RCPs). The best-case scenario (RCP 2.6) projects sea level rise around 0.5 m by 2100, and the worst case (RCP 8.5) a 1.3 m rise. Much of this rise depends on the stability of the ice cliffs on the Antarctic Ice Sheet. This piece depicts sea level rise for each RCP in bowls glazed like maps. Resting inside are Antarctica pieces carved to show different locations and amounts of ice melt.
Ghost forest ceramic bowls under heat lamp evaporating water inside the bowls
Daylight photo of ghost forest bowls under the heat lamp
Ghost forest ceramic bowls under heat lamp evaporating water inside the bowls
Ghost Forest
2024, clay
Ghost forests form when saltwater poisons trees. The remnant trunks rise as giant tombstones marking the death of an ecosystem. Sea level rise and sinking lands lead to these saltwater intrusions. A soda solution spraying during glaze firing produced a haunting chemically-induced stain augmenting the theme of the piece as the green slip which contained copper turned brown and red.
Tornado Tankards
2024, clay
Inspired by a tornado and debris ball that it stirs up, the funnel was carved while rotating to capture motion, with glaze made runny to form rills that mimic running water. Twigs were pressed into the debris ball. If you fill one up with liquid and put it down without its base, you will have a disaster on hand!
Ripple Infused Grails
2024, clay
These wave-shaped mugs are designed to fit together or stand apart with large handles for stability. The waves represent the connection between two people sharing the beverage and the convection distributing energy within the liquid and between the liquid and the air. The set has left- and right-handed pairings.
Best Dresser
2023, clay, steel, linen, flax and marigold plants
Dressers hold clothes which can be made from plants. This dresser holds flax which is used to make linen and marigold flowers which are used in fabric dyes to achieve a yellow-orange color. The top collects and funnels water towards the center and under the wavy grid, dripping into the first drawer. Once that drawer accumulates water, it flows out holes in the face of the dresser in the troughs of a wave shape that is carved into the clay. It spills down into the bottom drawer which is twice as deep to hold soil and the plants. The dresser also comes with accessories – pockets and removable linen neckties for the dress shirt carved into each side. The top drawer opens as well so that one could drip water directly from the top into the second drawer. The dresser is perched on a metal stand of roots that connect it into the soil. Metal drawer pulls twisted into raindrop shapes are covered by braided flax twine. Blue unites all sides and top of the dresser. This piece symbolizes my choice to dress in a nonbinary way, with my new skills in ceramics perched atop the foundation that working in the metals shop has given me to grow roots in the arts community in a mid-life rebirth full of vibrant colors and waves of energy in the form of wind and water.
Cores arranged in cluster with plastic-containing cubes spilling out
Cores arranged in cluster with plastic-containing cubes spilling out
looking down among the tubes of ice cubes
Cores arranged in cluster with plastic-containing cubes spilling out
Core Melt II: Anthropocene
2025, Glycerin, plastic, natural objects, printed and hand-written knowledge, metal
Core Melt I was installed outdoors in 2004 on the Pennsylvania State University campus where I embedded memories into simulated ice cubes that eroded in the rain and snow. For this current sculpture, the cubes have a color scheme representing changing temperatures and precipitation patterns as would be seen by paleoclimatologists taking ice cores from glaciers. Red = warmer, blue = cooler, green = wetter, orange = drier. The cores preserve bubbles of air and objects embedded within the layers to record Earth’s climatological history. In the tubes, the bottom (oldest) layer pre-dates humans, containing natural objects. As humans appear and the technology develops, mass-printed knowledge is embedded. Following are hand-written accounts of an individual’s life experience mixed with and finally ending with clear cubes. These contain words cut from plastic bags and food wrappers. The plastic-filled cubes spill out as a reminder that when the last glacier melts, plastic artifacts will remain to tell the story of modern humans and how we violated the Earth.
Other Materials
Boxed Breath
2023, Thermal Anemometer, Arduino, muscle wire, paper, wood
Trees and other plants enable humans to exist by providing shelter, food, moisture, and oxygen. During photosynthesis, solar radiation powers the conversion of carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and glucose. As photosynthesis is powered by the sun, most trees only release oxygen during the day. In this piece, a human powers the tree. The sapling is rooted inside a tunnel with light supplied by a battery instead of the sun. The carbon dioxide is supplied by the viewer as they look through the binocular-like holes. The viewer’s breath is collected by a small funnel-shaped opening under the nose and registered by a wind sensor. When the current of air is strong enough, the exhale triggers current that heats and contracts wires that move the leaves. During inhale, the sensor does not measure wind and the tree does not move. In nature, the human would be taking in the life-sustaining oxygen generated by the tree. In this artificial environment, they inhale the stale air that occupies the space. The longer the interaction, the more light is produced to help fuel the process. The tunnel is made from the pulp of recycled paper mixed with leaves to provide an earthy scent and the frame is made from wood. The viewer should ponder their intimate connection to trees and nature and how the artificial substances and environments we create to support our hunger for power has permanently polluted our relationships.
Installation of plastic collector for rain water over the storm drain cover for which it was designed
View of collector looking down into it
Close up of the plastic from water bottles as it rains on the piece
Installation of plastic collector for rain water over the storm drain cover for which it was designed
Rain Water Contamination Mesh
2022 steel, plastic
Humans regularly drink water from plastic bottles, but this piece bypasses the bottling plant. Instead, rainwater passes through plastic on its journey from clouds to the surface. The stand holds a vessel that captures, filters, and funnels rainwater through plastic. The geometric and symmetric shapes of the steel rods compliment the dome and triangle stand. I procured used clear plastic water bottles and wove them into the triangular funnel. The fishing lines guide the droplets towards the drain. The circular layer collects water in the bottle bottoms, eventually overflowing into the drain. The lightweight transparent plastic and delicate raindrops contradict the heavy, dark drain.
Curriculum Vitae
Education
2005 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Ph.D., Physical Geography (Climatology) Pennsylvania State University
2001Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â M.A., Physical Geography (Climatology) Arizona State University Â
1999Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â B.S., Environmental Geoscience (Atmospheric Science); Minor: Sculpture Clarion University of PA
Professional Appointments
2020 - pres.    Professor – University of Florida
2012 - 2020    Associate Professor – University of Florida
2005 - 2012    Assistant Professor – University of Florida
2004 - 2005    Visiting Assistant Professor – Ohio University
2002 - 2004    Graduate Teaching Assistant – Pennsylvania State University
2001 - 2002    Graduate Research Assistant – Pennsylvania State University
1999 - 2001     Graduate Research Assistant – Arizona State University
1998 - 1999Â Â Â Work-Study Sculpture Studio, Clarion University of PA
1997-1999Â Â Â Â Undergraduate Research Assistant, NASA-JOVE program, Clarion University of PA
1996-1998Â Â Â Â Work-Study Carlson Library, Clarion University of PA
Memberships
2024Â Mid-South Sculpture Alliance
Awards and Honors
2025 Fellow of the American Association of Geographers
2025 - 2028 UF Research Foundation Professorship
2019 - 2022 University of Florida Term Professorship
2019 Southeastern Division of the American Association of Geographers Excellence in
Teaching Award
2019 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year Award
2018 University of Florida Water Institute Photo Contest Winner
2016 - 2019 University of Florida Term Professorship
2014 - 2015 Colonel Allan R. and Margaret G. Crow Term Professor
2009 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year Award
2006 American Association of Geographers (AAG) Nystrom Competition Finalist
2005 AAG Climate Specialty Group Student Paper Competition Winner
Solo Shows
2025 Coring, 4Most Gallery, Gainesville, FL
2003 Hanging Water, Walker Building stairwell, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA
1999 Leaves Rustle, Empty Set Gallery, Clarion PA
1998 A Journey to the Desert, Empty Set Gallery, Clarion PA
Group Exhibitions
2025 Picking it Up, Night Jar Gallery, Gainesville, FL curated by Jade Bennett
2025 Materials Symposium, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
2024 Connections vol. 4, UrbanGlass, Brooklyn, NY curated by Tracey Carswell, Rebecca Lee, and SULO BEE
2024 Dreamscapes, Brick City Center for the Arts, Ocala, FL, juried by Allison McCarthy
2024 MSA Select, Vulcan Materials Gallery at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, Birmingham, AL, juried by Vanessa German
2024 Thriving, Abundant, Joyful Presents and Futures, Pennant Place, Gainesville, FL, curated by Flounder Lee with jurors Aya Rodriguez-Izumi and Lauryn Tyler
2024 Post Cards from Utopia, Italy International Center traveling exhibition, Palazzo Gallio, Alvito, Italy
2024 Mugshot: Artistic Drinking Vessels Exhibition, Arvada Center, Arvada, CO
2024 HEAT, Gainesville Fine Arts Association, Gainesville, FL curated by Katy Lemle and Skip Snow with jurors Jane Gilbert and Jeff Goodell
2024 Summer Intensive Exhibition, THE HUB Gallery, New York School of the Arts, New York, NY, curated by Kathryn Cameron
2024 Sculpture Garden, Museum of Contemporary Art Long Island, Patchogue, NY, curated by John Cino
2024 State of Water, Cade Museum, Gainesville, FL, juried by UF faculty and local artists
2024 Continuous Cycles, Working Method Contemporary Gallery, Tallahassee, FL, curated by Kim Springs and Jillian Heusohn
2023 Post Cards from Utopia, Italy International Center traveling exhibition, Phillipi Crest Clubhouse, Sarasota, FL
2023 ARTBOX.PROJECTS Miami 4.0, Miami, FL
2023 Openings, Decagon Gallery (online)
2023 Extinction: An International Group Exhibition by Gallerium (online)
2022 Sculpture, Possum Creek Park, Gainesville, FL
2004 The Weather Project, State College, PA
2003 Site-Specific Installation, Hanging Water, Walker Building stairwell, State College, PA
2001 Wood You? Wood You Not?, Step Gallery, Tempe, AZ
2001 Mystery Gallery, Art Detour 13, Phoenix, AZ
Workshops Attended
2025 Welding week-long course, Underground Metalworks, Orlando, FL
2024 Plasma Cutting, Voyam Fine Arts, Ocala, FL
2024 Introduction to Metal Working and Biomorphism in Clay: New York School of the Arts Summer Intensive Program New York, NY
2024 Metal Sculpture Welding & Fabrication: Art Students League New York, NY
2022 - 2025 Welding (7) and Blacksmithing (6): Fever Metal Arts Gainesville, FL
2023 Blacksmithing (2): Florida Artist Blacksmith Association Annual Conference Gainesville, FL
2023 TIG Welding: Hardy & Fuller Denver, CO
2022 Welding and Blacksmithing: Wrought Iron Arts Largo, FL