Ned Schaper, Founder of Mat Bevel Company. Photo courtesy of Abril Castillo.
Ned Schaper, sculptor, poet, performer and philosopher, is the creator of the world of Beveldom, the Museum Of Kinetic Art, Bevelvision Productions, The Three Days of Beveldom theatrical narrative and the School of Intuition. Born and raised in Alliance, Ohio he graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a degree in entomology and immediately relocated into the desert sandscape of Tucson, Arizona.
In 1983 he created the Sculptic Set Theater, turning contraptions of found objects into theater as a recognized force in New York City’s active arts subculture.
Returning to Tucson in 1986, Ned inaugurated the General Belief System Technology Project under the designate “Mat Bevel.” In addition to his role in visual and performance art, he served as assistant artistic director of Orts Theater of Dance season, and in 1991 he was awarded an Artist Project grant by the Arizona Commission on the Arts for his solar-powered Pedestrian Carnival. In 2000 he won the Arizona Arts Award from the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona.
The Mat Bevel Institute, created in 1992 with his sister Paula as a venue for the visionary arts, was founded on the principles of Available Resource Technology (ART) and dedicated to building community through the spirit of ART. In 2014 Ned was given a solo retrospective exhibition at the Tucson Museum of Art called Welcome to Beveldom: Mat Bevel’s Museum of Kinetic Art.
Now Ned is capturing his ‘kinetic junk theater’ using stop motion animation, time-lapse photography, greenscreen compositing, virtual reality and live video technologies. Through Mat Bevel Company’s new video unit called Bevelvision Productions, his live work is evolving into a modern digital theater, with access to fine art entertainment for people of all ages, anywhere.
View Ned’s installations, exhibitions & performances
View Ned’s awards & accomplishments
View Ned’s personal art website