MATTER’S New Community Space Will “Boost the Creative Sector That No One’s Boosting”

Rick Griffith of MATTER Studio has never been just a graphic designer and artist, letterpress printer or bookstore owner. He’s one of Denver's most forward creative thinkers, a believer in the power of community, DIY, fair commerce, BIPOC entrepreneurship, Afrofuturism and the dreams of young people. And as time goes by, Griffith continues to bring more authentic experiences to life.

“This year we’ve been working toward opening a new performance venue,” Griffith says. “We’re putting together five programming partners to help with traditional and experimental movement and dance, live podcasting, film and music residencies."

To facilitate all that, the bookstore will move two doors down, to 2114 Market Street, in 2024. “Everything book-related will be over there, and design and printing will stay at 2134," he notes. "We’re splitting the enterprise by location because we ran out of space. We just couldn't do four things in one space.”

Earlier this year at a pop-up bookstore in New York City, Griffith noticed the design books flying off the shelf. Back in Denver, he’s expanding MATTER’s design book titles and plans to start a design book club soon. “It’s a little bit of the same thing I’ve been doing for the last 24 years,” he says.
Among other changes and additions in the bookstore, he notes that there is now a deeper stationery section, an observation that leads into an off-the-cuff mini-lecture on bookstore economics: “You have to add more than books. The tension is the defining price of a book, which is set by the publisher, versus how much you can pay your people. You have to move a certain amount of books and product to pay people.”

But Griffith says MATTER is also rebelling against that model with unorthodox projects, including a store-sponsored lending library, where a core group of books on essential topics critical to personal liberation can be checked out for free and circulated among friends as a way of raising community conversations.

“We think it’s time to run the penultimate community space bookstore. It’s all about community, bringing people together,” Griffith adds. “We’ve got a bunch of new and amazing titles. And a larger bookstore space means we can create room for a couple of seats, maybe a coffee shop."

The stage that MATTER is building will be more than a stage, too; it’s really meant to serve as a safe space for experiments in arts and culture. “We want to boost the creative sector that no one’s boosting," Griffith says. "Now we’ll be taking care of the talent in town, cultivating more opportunities for talented people to do their work."

And to that end, Griffith is pulling together what he calls “a cohort of curators” to provide content.

That would include Denver Orbit creator, producer, writer and podcaster Josh Mattison, whom Griffith is bringing on board for what he hopes will become a new home for such projects as a live podcast performance festival.

CU Boulder’s Donna Mejia, a specialist in transcultural dance and movement, will serve as an “interdisciplinary connector combining the artistic dance traditions from Africa and all over the world.”

The infinite possibilities of making music is a realm that Griffith would like to see develop in the space, as well. “Roger Green is in conversations with us about an improvisational music series next year," he says. "We hope to host events for him, including improv concerts and lectures at the intersection of the community of improvisation and finding more people to bring into that conversation.”

Using the space for occasional emergent gallery shows is also a given for Griffith.
Beyond the new performance venue and expanded bookstore, Griffith also hopes to add additional hands-on letterpress printing classes. Two beginner-friendly, single-Saturday classes are scheduled for December 16 and January 13, with more on the way through 2024. The fee for a one-day workshop is $220.

That all adds up to a lot of growth. “Nuts is what it is,” Griffith admits, but that’s what he’s all about. MATTER is a “manufactory” whose sprawl will somehow be sustained because communities are giving, he explains, and there’s a need for it.

“People are expressing themselves more around issues they see in the world worthy of on-screen attention, but they are cramped up at home, eyes on screens,” Griffith says. “We invite them to come use their hands, brain and eyes — use the whole body. They get to be in a room with eight other people who are just as excited to be out in the world learning something new.

“We want to contribute a radical place to convene,” he continues. “We’ll be moving over in January to get the space finished and get the books over there, and then we’re hoping to have the best spring ever.”

Griffith expects to run the venue on a pay-what-you-can sliding-scale basis for most events, using an RSVP system to keep the process organized. “This is a community building move, not an expansion of commerce,” he notes.

You can get a rough sneak peek at the changes at MATTER during its 24th annual Printsale and Party,
which returns Friday, December 8, with exciting international prints — including Griffith’s own poster output from the last year and a new series from his budding collage project, using printing plates and other materials — as well as curated hourly dancing in the kitchen with live music by Eman and the Namebackwards Trio and Afro-Latin spins with DJ Selecta-C. And, of course, the unstoppable Griffith might have a mixtape of his own.

24th Annual MATTER Printsale and Party, Friday, December 8, 6 p.m. to midnight, at MATTER, 2114/2134 Market Street. MATTER’S expansion GoFundMe will formally launch at the party over mojitos, mocktails and eats by the Maiz food truck.