We’re back! Welcome to the next installment of the second season of Sustaining Craft the Podcast, a series that features those in a creative field. Listen below to learn more or keep scrolling to read about Matthew Castellano and his vision for art in Little Rock.

Matthew Castellano couldn’t find a job.

He’d moved to Little Rock in 2010, ready to be closer to family. He had experience as a culinary chef, but no professional connections in the area.

Until he ended up at the skatepark.

“It was really hard for me to find a job when I first got here,” Castellano shared. “And going to the skatepark one day, I got a job. They’re out there, rolling around, and they’re professional chefs and welders and tradesmen–they’re all out there, just trying to do the same thing people do when they go play basketball or something. Just hang out.”

Castellano ended up with a position at ART Outfitters, a Little Rock art supply store. He’s also now a professional artist and the curator of Gallery 360, working with mixed media while helping other artists. “I’m still uncomfortable saying that I’m a professional artist, but it’s getting better,” he said. “I do a lot of watercolor ink and then some other inks on top of that. Sometimes acrylic paint on top of that, but definitely watercolor. I’ve fallen in love with it. I’ve been doing watercolors about a year, maybe two years now, and it’s the bulk of my work.”

He’d grown up in Florida, getting his artistic start through skateboarding. “Of course, my friends were all wonderful artists,” Castellano shared. “I kept that mentality throughout my creative endeavors across the country.”

He started by drawing, then moved over to paint pens to draw on the grip tape they applied to their skateboards. “You personalize your skateboard and you go out and skate and people like it or they don’t,” he said. “It became a thing. It’s like putting stickers on your skateboard on the bottom, a character or drawing or your name across the top kind of thing. Almost graffiti, but not.”

Perhaps if skateboarding had become a viable career sooner, Castellano would have taken a different route. Instead, he pursued a career in hospitality, working his way from bellhop to chef while creating art. “I really had to figure out what I wanted to do with myself,” Castellano explained. “Skateboarding is not the most clear beacon for someone for a career back then. Now it’s an Olympic sport that’s going to be in the Olympics in 2020. … I had to put more into art and I just kept going back to it. It started to really click here in Little Rock.”

Before he moved, Castellano continued to skateboard in Florida, finding the creativity and physicality of the sport engaging, along with the social aspect. “I didn’t have to be on a team and everybody had their own thing going on so we could just hang out,” he said. “I don’t think I had anything in common with my friends growing up but skateboarding. I don’t think we had any background likeness … none of us were the same. We’re just all skateboarded. That’s just kind of prepared me to be in different places with different people and it was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t have to like you but I can skate with you.’”

Then he visited his grandfather, who’d ended up in Harrison, Ark., near the Buffalo River. “He wanted to retire and be close to the Buffalo National Park,” Castellano explained. “I visited in ‘94 as a kid and I stayed the whole summer and it was a blast. … I loved Arkansas because it was a mystery. I never saw somewhere with rivers. I’m used to oceans and never really saw a river river. I saw creeks and springs but nothing like the Buffalo.”

Castellano returned to Florida, but moved officially to Little Rock in 2010. His love of skateboarding and search for a community took him to the skatepark, which was directly behind Gallery 360. “That’s where I learned and met people here and became part of the skateboarding scene, but also the art scene because the gallery was always right there,” he said. “It kind of made it easier to be like, ‘Yeah, let’s go over there.’”

When the gallery was in danger of closing, Castellano decided he would take on the project. He started raising money and planning pop-ups, absorbing the risk. “I didn’t want to bring anybody else down,” he shared. “I wanted to do it pretty much on my own back. I did the GoFundMe for it and I had a lot better response than I thought I’ve ever had. So I have to do it now. Yeah, it’s like yes, okay, I get to do it and have to do it. … It’s really the community.”

He’s also built an educational element into the gallery, sharing the smaller details of working with galleries, like making sure a name is on the back of every art piece, resumes and portfolios are up-to-date, and that every “no” hits hard, but each “yes” makes up for it. “I’ve been rejected more times than I’ve been accepted but I was accepted a few times and that makes all the difference,” he said. “I want to be the person that I didn’t have.”

Each artist accepted into Gallery 360 walks away learning how to work with other galleries as well. “Everyone that gets to show here is going to learn how to be an artist by the end of their show,” Castellano said. “That way, they are stronger about going into other places and being represented. A lot of times, gallerists and people that represent don’t want to have to deal with people that don’t know. It’s a lot of work on their end. if they come in and they’re completely perfect, then they have nothing but good roads ahead of them. So even the smallest things like not putting information on the back of the piece is detrimental sometimes because you never know if that could be a sale or if you’re never gonna see that piece again because it can get lost.”

In many ways, the gallery is beyond just a space. Castellano has built all of his goals around helping others. “That’s why I think I like 360’s mission is to bring in some of those emerging artists and give them a show or professional development to try to get them on the right path,” he added. “Because that’s what they did for me unknowingly, but now it’s knowing that I want to do that for others. That’s the whole point of this gallery for a year.”

It’s a point he wants to continue to grow with others. “I had this vision, and you can have dreams all day, but until someone shares that dream, it’s just a dream,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that I can pass on and I didn’t have that. So I learned the hard way and I would not want anybody else to learn that way because it doesn’t make you a better artist. It just makes you realize that you’re alone a lot more in art and that shouldn’t happen. You should be able to create art and feel like there’s a group of people that will help you that you can turn to.

Castellano plans to keep opening up the dialogue about the work he’s doing with Gallery 360. “I want to work with everybody,” he said. “I want to break the little circles. I want to make a big circle.”

And he’s found additional ways to connect his two interests, aside from the parallels that have presented through the physical effort, the necessary discipline, the technical ability, the built-in community, and the huge amounts of risk. Castellano held his Little Rock Skateboard Show on Saturday, February 16, featuring local brands.

But there’s growth too, in all of his pursuits, as Castellano has found while watching his own style evolve over the years. “I’m not trying to do a realistic style or an abstract style,” he shared. “This is definitely something I’ve cultivated over the past five years and gone through emotional stress and work stress and all that stuff and it was used as a vehicle to better my situation and understand the world around me.”

He’s seen his preferred color palettes change from black, white, and red to more color variety. “It’s exploring a lot of sustainability with there being a lot of my characters who like to wear a lot of clothes that represent their attitudes and fabrics and patterns and kind of getting into weird little cultures, making my own little world,” he explained.

As for others looking to break into the art world, Castellano encourages them to spend the time on their work. “Keep at it,” he shared. “Do it a lot. Work a lot on your work. Think about it a lot. Reflect a lot. The art is yourself and you’re hanging piece of yourself on the wall when you do that, so make sure that it is you. Don’t put any facades up. Be yourself. Make sure it’s you, not anybody else.”

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Ice Box 4 opened on January 4 and ended January 26, featuring an all-women artist showcase of Hannah V Lemke, June Pham, Rayna Mackey, Anaka Njeri Smith, Olivia Pate, Lauren Crosthwait, Jennifer Perren, Brittney Marie, and Hannah D. Hinojosa.

On Friday, March 1, Harper-Bean Productions and Castellano present “Ultraviolet” or “The Blacklight Show”, featuring Carmen Alexandria, Robert Bean, Matthew Castellano, Diane Harper, Tea Jackson, Holly Laws, Hannah Lemke, Daniella Napolitano, Kasten Searles, and Michael Shaeffer. The show will open Friday, March 1 and run until March 22. Admission is free. Learn more here.

Follow Castellano on his art Instagram and Gallery 360 Instagram and Facebook to see what’s coming up next. Support Gallery 360 by donating to the GoFundMe. See more of Castellano’s work online here at Big Cartel.