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"  There\u2019s an art show next week in Chinatown where everything\u2019s made of matches \u2013 literally matchsticks and glue. The artist even sounds like matches \u2013 Matjames Metson.  He deliberately fashioned the double-first-name thing, and it seems to go with his beard, tattoos and hat, and his workshop in Silverlake, which is LA\u2019s Williamsburg (which is Brooklyn\u2019s Shoreditch). You could easily mistake him for a hipster. But he isn\u2019t.  Matjames is one of those stories that builds the myth of LA as a place of reinvention and possibility. Not a fairytale about a busboy who gets discovered at a Pizza place (though that happens too, #ChrisZylka), but a proper story of tragedy and hope and humanity. The kind of thing that comes on the radio around rushhour and straight away you stop bitching about the traffic.  \u201CI had to use matches,\u201D he says. \u201CThey were the only materials I could afford.\u201D  It was 2006, and Katrina had destroyed his life. He\u2019d been a successful artist in New Orleans, but the floods killed his friends, drowned his work, and washed away every possession he had except for the clothes on his back and his two pitbulls, Pikachu and Pearl.  When a friend in LA sent him the money to go live with her and get back on his feet, he said yes, and spent a couple of months there recuperating. And then she found him an apartment in Koreatown, where he tried to rebuild his life.  But it wasn\u2019t working.  \u201CIn Los Angeles, everyone\u2019s here to win, but I was struggling to survive. I had a futon and a TV and that was it. My building was a rat\u2019s nest. And I had a budget of $2 a day to live on.\u201D  Every morning, he\u2019d eat a handful of dog kibble, and then go out and beg for the bus fare to get to work \u2013 a $7/hr gig in the stock room at an art store.  \u201CI had flood victim written all over me. I was failing. I needed help.\u201D\u00A0    All his life, Matjames had moved from city to city. And it\u2019s never easy. The dislocation, the strangers, the starting over \u2013 it\u2019s exhausting. But his parents were also artists and travelled from one teaching job to the next while he was growing up. And they in turn had come from England, full of bold ideas.  \u201CYou couldn\u2019t bring cash, there was a limit,\u201D he says, \u201Cso they put their savings into buying a Rolls Royce and shipping it over, thinking they could sell it when they got to New York. They forgot that they drove on the wrong side of the street.\u201D  Metson\u2019s own travels began at 16. He was living in a grim small town in Ohio at the time, and his girlfriend had just had a baby girl called Tyler. And Matjames freaked out.  \u201CI didn\u2019t know what to do so I just took off. I was way too immature to have a kid. I still am! So I left my parents, my brother, and all my friends. It was scary. I put all my stuff in an army duffel bag and just left.\u201D  He ended up in New Orleans, working in bars, by night, and making art by day. It was a thriving art scene, and life was good \u2013 he had shows, he was written about, he was on his way. But then came Katrina, and his escape to LA, where he was living hand to mouth. It felt like he was drowning all over again.  And that\u2019s when the phone rang one night. It was Tyler \u2013 his daughter that he\u2019d never met or spoken with for all those years. She was a teenager now, and wanted to get to know her biological father, maybe visit him eventually.  \u201CI thought, \u2019this person wants to know me, so I have to do better for myself.\u2019 So he started making art again - buying matches and glue at the Dollar Store, and sitting in his roach-infested Koreatown studio, making things. It was a way of shutting out his problems.  \u201CIn New Orleans, I was kind of blas\u00E9 as an artist. I wasn\u2019t serious enough. But coming to LA, art became my one focussed thing. There was no more time in bars. And I was immobilized - I don\u2019t drive, don\u2019t have a car, I don\u2019t have any money to go on the buses.\u201D  And slowly but surely, his life began to change. He met a girl at his job, who saw past his wretchedness and listened. \u201CEveryone I met, I wanted to just say, \u2018I need help, I need help,\u2019 and she was the first person who said, \u2018OK, tell me how.\u2019 I was like \u2018really?\u2019\u201D City of angels indeed.  He spoke every so often to Tyler, and galvanized his determination to make her proud. And three years later \u2013 not a blink by any stretch - he had his first LA art show. He was back. \u201CMy daughter calling literally saved my life.\u201D    Today Matjames is 42 and still going strong with that girl he met \u2013 they live together in her grandmother\u2019s old house in Silverlake. He\u2019s close to his daughter Tyler \u2013 \u201Chow many people who can say they\u2019re good friends with their teenage daughter?\u201D And he has a book in the works for Penguin, a graphic novel called \u201CSurivivors Guild\u201D about his life after Katrina.  Ask Matjames what he thinks about LA and he\u2019s unequivocal. \u201CIt\u2019s a cartoon strip for sure, but it\u2019s not the narrative people think. You can reinvent yourself here. Start again. All you need to do is work harder than you\u2019ve ever worked in your life. I love this place.\u201D  Matjames Metson\u2019s show, A Better Home For A Quiet Wolf opens March 15th at the Coagula Curatorial, LA: coagulacuratorial.com  *** MORE IN 74 AND SUNNY:At The Sex AwardsLA&amp;#039;s Emerging Rave SceneKorea Town After Hours*** "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/news/a5889/74-and-sunny-matjames-metson-and-the-art-of-reinvention/>