VISUAL DIARY 1954-2026
Although known as a photographer, Matuschka's works on paper and canvas remain a constant and essential element of her art. From early on she kept a visual diary, a sketch book full of drawings, cartoons and caricatures which documented her experiences and relationships with people. This page is a brief visual outline of Matuschka's memoir which captures her life story through meticulously kept diaries, illustrations, and other visual documentation beginning when she was a teenager in 1970 untill 2014 when she started assembling her archives.
As a kid and teenager she scribbles and draws constantly in her notebooks.
Early Life (Ages 1-13)
From early on, Joanne inspires to be a cartoon artist like the ones she observes on the boardwalks of Coney Island and Asbury Park. As a kid she uses humor in her cartoons to escape the trauma of her childhood. At 9 she begins selling greeting cards door to door.
By 14, Joanne has worked in a bakery, baby sitter, care giver and as a waitress in NJ. She quits school to take care of her younger brother and sister as their mother begins dying of cancer.
On February 11th, 1968, Joanne's mom dies of breast cancer. On her deathbed she asks Joanne to promise not to become a drug addict or prostitute. Already a heavy drug abuser at that time, Joanne thinks to herself, “This is going to be a problem, a promise I can't keep.”
Matuschka was born in Newton, New Jersey to a policeman at the George Washington Bridge and a mother, who was a farm hand from Allamuchy, New Jersey.
1968 (Age 13-15)
On August 13, 1968, Joanne steals a car to be used as the getaway vehicle for a robbery taking place at a deli in Pompton Lakes NJ. On the way there, she cracks the stolen car up and leaves it in a ditch before running to the store. As police arrive to capture both the thief and Joanne, Joanne escapes on foot.The following day she runs away to Far Rockaway, N.Y. There she works as a cocktail waitress and shacks up with Rockaway Dave, a local pool hustler, for almost a year. As a fugitive, Joanne changes her name to Lisa Cross and although a warrant has been issued for her arrest by her father, a police officer, she is thrilled to have her picture published for the very first time. This moment begins her lifelong interest in documenting everything she does, and later, being involved in having her 'persona' photographed by herself and others.
Joanne appears as "Lisa Cross" in the WAVE, a daily newspaper published in the Rockaways.
Matuschka's self portrait as a busy waitress at the Aquaduct Dinner (now closed) in 1968
In 1969, Lisa Cross, is supporting her baby smack habit and going nowhere, living alone in a basement in Far Rockaway. One of her junky friends tells her that she is a "Nowhere chick, going nowhere fast." Offended by this line Lisa decides to turn herself in and returns home to NJ.
The next day she is arrested on her father’s front lawn and attends a court hearing whereby she becomes a Ward of the State of NJ and is sent to a Detention Center in Paramus, NJ. Lisa is now "Joanne" again.
Despite her bleak circumstances as a runaway fugitive, Lisa has a vision for her future and wants to make something of her life.
1969-70 (Age 15-16)
Joanne’s father remarries. "Oh no!"
After several court appearances, the Judge mandates foster care, probation and rehabilitation and releases her to her father's custody until a new home is found. Shortly
thereafter, her father, a cop on the GW Bridge, marries a toll collector. Friction between the stepmother and Joanne pushes Joanne to the point of plotting the murder of her stepmother until she meets Connie Marco, a hippie on the school bus.
Now snorting smack, instead of shooting it, Joanne offers Connie a hit. Connie declines and insists Joanne get off the bus at her stop and meet her mother. Joanne thinks to herself, “why not, I’ve got nothing better to do but go home and kill someone.”
Joanne's early sketches as a figurative model.
What happens next is nothing short of a miracle. Mrs. Marco phones Joanne’s probation officer and social worker that afternoon and adopts her that day. With Mrs. Marco’s love and attention, Joanne is introduced to the arts and begins working as a life sketching model, enrolls in art school, and begins a new life focusing on art and literature.
Joanne models nude for life
sketching classes, works as an art assistant and continues waitressing. But the turning point is when she is caught skinny dipping in a lake in Mahwah, N.J. That day would be instrumental for the young water nymph to become both a photographer and a model for the rest of her life.
Caught in her birthday suit, 1970
Now enrolled in art courses, the aspiring artist is also honing her skills in the darkroom with the photographers whom she is posing for. She learns how to print negatives in a commercial darkroom in Hackensack, N.J. and is mesmerized by the photographic process.
Unfortunately her life in her first foster home comes to an end and three more foster homes follow before her social worker decides she would be better off attending a boarding school in the Berkshires. This is an amazing feat, as she will soon matriculate at the Prestigious Private Prep School, Windsor Mountain and meet some of the most remarkable artists, writers and poets of her generation such as Gerald Malanga (Andy Warhol's assistant), Angus MacLise (first drummer for The Velvet Underground) and Don Snyder, a photographer who worked with Diane Arbus and printed for Walker Evans.
In the summer of 1971 she hitch-hikes to California.
Foster Care (Ages 16-17)
Mahwah, New Jersey, 1970
THE BERKSHIRES: LENOX, MASS 1971-1973 (Ages 17-19)
Changes her name to MATUSCHKA
Cartoon by Matuschka
Matuschka arrives in Lenox in 1971 to attend Windsor Mountain a private prep school known for its progressive, experiential learning, and multi-cultural student body. There, her European teacher, Jan Wiener, nicknames her "Matuschka"—a version of Motichka—which sounded much like her idol, the model "Veruschka".
Drawing by Matuschka
Matuschka is not quite at home with her fellow dormmates, many who are involved in drugs. She refuses to live in the dorm and finds other accommodations in a Victorian Mansion. There she spends 2 years reading, drawing, studying and painting– mostly alone.
Painting of Matuschka by Jan de Ruth
Self Portrait by Matuschka, 1972
Matuschka worked as a photo assistant for the renown photographer, Clemens Kalischer, at the Image Gallery in Stockbridge, Mass. and posed for life sketching classes and private artists and photographers.
When not working with artists she took jobs as a waitress, a construction worker and split wood for a lumber company.
The young artists' time spent in the Berkshires was pivotal as she entered the Alice Restaurant Scene, where she befriended some of the greatest artists of her time (including Ira Cohen, Don Snyder, Gerard Malanga, Angus MacLise) and became exposed to magnificent art, music, theatre, dance and literature.
Matuschka's first Solo Show of self-portraits was at the Lenox Library in 1972 and reviewed in The Berkshire Eagle. Upon graduating from Windsor Mt. she received the Fine Art Award.
"There is a stark brutality, an almost hurtful, pained feeling in the paintings of Joanne Motichka now on exhibition at the Lenox Library. A vigorous, dynamic but well controlled technique supports an imaginative almost terrifying preoccupation with figures and faces (mostly female). This existential theme still prevails and is well illustrated in her dramatic, almost morbid painting entitled “Distortion of a Self-Portrait”. She has studied art privately with Julio Granda, Sushil Mukherjee and worked as a photographic assistant for Clemens Kalischer. Although her work illustrates several mediums, most of her pieces consist of charcoal drawings, ink washes and watercolors." -Art Review
Portrait of Matuschka, 1973 (Don Snyder)
Sylvia by Don Snyder, 1968
Self Portraits by Matuschka, 1972
The two years Matuschka spent in the Berkshires were significant for her development as a photographer and printer. She enrolled in photography courses and studied with Don Snyder and Clemens Kalischer. With their mentoring, she learns unusual darkroom techniques– printing with toners, numbered papers, filters, and double exposures as seen in the experimental self-portraits above. In 1973 she purchased her first photograph (Sylvia) from her mentor, Don Snyder, (seen above) before leaving for Europe. When she returns to the Berkshires she packs up and heads west to attend the fall semester at Prescott College in Prescott Az.
ARIZONA TO NEW YORK 1973-1974 (Ages 18-20)
Drawing by Matuschka, 1974
Matuschka arrives in Prescott, AZ. in 1973 to attend College just as Prescott College starts to go bankrupt. Although she participates in all the theatrical productions, studies art privately and continues writing poetry, the South West made no sense to her. She continues corresponding with her social and rehab workers back east and makes a decision to return to New York in 1974.
Drawing by Matuschka, 1974
The aspiring artist arrives in NYC for the fall semester at SVA and is psyched to be back on the east coast! She begins studying painting with Jennifer Bartlett and switches her artistic style from figurative to abstract. Her social workers arrange for her schooling and minimal room and board, but NYC is expensive and she needs to get a job.
Drawing by Matuschka, 1974
As a full time student, securing a job with the least hours and highest pay is the way to go. There were three jobs in this category: Go-Go Dancer, Waitress or Taxi driver. Not wanting to return to waitressing, she began Go-Go Dancing in N.J. (not topless), but found it too demeaning. Although New York Taxi fleets didn't hire woman at the time, she finally convinced Chase Maintenance to allow her to drive for them and she became one of the first female cab drivers to push a hack at night.
Matuschka's Taxi Drivers License, 1974
Abstract Relief by Matuschka, 1974
NEW YORK CITY 1974- 1977 (Ages 21-23)
Matuschka arrival in NYC was a magical time for artists: as Peter Jennings once put it "NYC in the 70s was not only a beacon of optimism and energy, it was a dynamo stick of liberty." NYC was bankrupt. Apartments were cheap and the cost of living low.
Well that's the way it was when Matuschka drove her 1969 122s Volvo into NY. "Putting my foot down in the sand at Jones BeachI could see the Empire State building in the distance and I knew, I had just been transported to a different galaxy: and somewhere in side, I realized I'd never be the same again: my space boogey had just begun.
Drawing by Matuschka
After her first year at SVA and driving a cab, Matuschka made a rash decision: she decided to quit school, stop pushing a hack and Immedaitly fell into the art scene, first befriending Anton Perich whom she would work with for years, the great fashion photographer Bill Silano, whom she would apprentice with and again, hooking up with Gerald Malanga and Don SNyder whose relationship would last over 35 years.
By 1976 she devoted her efforts to modeling and being a muse to many artists. As always she documented her life's' experiences in drawings and writings.
Modeling Clients:
Push Pin Studios
Richard Ely, Illustrator
House Model for "The House of Julio"
Named "The Model of the Future"
by Charles James
Runway Modeling:
Scott Barrie
Bonwit Teller
Christian Dior
Celine
Ungaro
Jean Paul Gaultier
Fabrizio Gianni, etc.
MATUSCHKA ARRIVES IN EUROPE 1976-1977 (Ages 22-23)
In 1976 Wilhelmina sends Matuschka to Milan. From there she will travel to various locations in Europe and end up in Paris where she meets what she terms "shady agents " who would send her out for 'go sees' and also try to set her up with wealthy clients. Instead, Matuschka prefers to go to Museums and experience European culture and cuisine.
WORK IN PROGRESS
TO BE CONTINUED