Ghost Girl is a perfect amalgam of the perfect girl for Matt Siren.

Long hours playing Pacman as a kid seered her ghostly shape into his retina. Long hours sitting in the pew at Catholic church in Queens staring at the rosary produced the stylized Keltic Cross barrette in her perfectly combed hair. Her prim reserve and Japanime styling probably folds into that Catholic upbringing too, but let’s not all be armchair psychoanalysts! Or am I projecting?

You’ll find Ghost Girl nested into pieces by Matt, even when the topic is something else, or when he is collaborating.  He likes collaborating with artist to see what is produced by the collision of styles, and usually is really stoked by the results.  His show at Woodward Gallery with Dark Clouds last year featured multiple collaborations with a number of street artists (see a nice post on C-Monster from that show).  A designer at heart, Matt has produced clean boyant posters for bands and burlesque shows.

For the “Street Crush” show at Alphabeta this Friday, Matt is collaborating with artist Lee Holin, who favors portraits of friends in his work – first photographing their image and then painting it.  “Skinny Drip”, their piece together, features one of these black and white images with silver screen print of Matt’s newest character (the Skull Mistress) masking out part of Holin’s model.  And of course, nestled into the text at the bottom you see 4 little red “Ghost Girls”. Perfect!

"Skinny Drip" by Matt Siren and Lee Holin (for "Street Crush" show)

STREET CRUSH is a BEST BET in New York Magazine this week.

Matt Siren’s Site

Woodward Gallery

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