Mat Wenzel

My work is built from what most people throw away. Old event flyers, shopping bags, playing cards, wine labels, recycled poetry, scraps of printed ephemera that seemed too small or too ordinary to matter--these become the raw material for handmade books, zines, and altered objects designed to hold even more ordinary moments. I came to bookbinding through poetry, and I think of them the same way. A poem doesn't start with an idea — it starts with a word that felt strange in my mouth, a line that broke somewhere unexpected, a scrap of overheard language that wouldn't leave me alone. Making works the same way. I start with the materials in front of me and follow where they lead. The concept follows the texture. I've always been drawn to things that don't quite fit the official definitions: overlooked poets, discarded objects, experiences that don't get documented because they seem too small or too queer or too everyday to be worth preserving. My work tries to argue otherwise: that your daily life, with all its mundane, weird, tender details, is worth holding onto. When you pick up something I've made, you can feel where it's been. That's the whole idea.