Music & Film
by Matt LeVeque
Mail Art
about the art
Matt LeVeque (film & music) and Yumiko Glover (visual art) both turn their attention to the Los Angeles freeway system—not to chart its path or critique its sprawl, but to find the traces of intimacy, memory, and meaning that cling to its edges. With a shared sense of patient attention and dreamlike detail, they ask what it means to move through a place slowly, over time, and let it shape you. Their works suggest that even in the most impersonal of landscapes, it’s possible to find space for reflection and quiet transformation.
Matt’s video piece Cloverleaf Interchanges takes its title from a poem by his partner, Justin Dela Cruz, who references the looping, layered freeway ramps that connect Southern California’s vast system of roads. Using long, uninterrupted shots of driving paired with ambient percussion and field recordings, Matt transforms these familiar sites into unexpected spaces of meditation. Rooted in his relationship with Justin, the work becomes both a personal reflection and a broader meditation on queer place-making—on how meaning can be slowly woven into concrete, traffic, and the monotony of freeway commuting. In the film, infrastructure is no longer inert; it holds memory, movement, and presence.
Yumiko’s PCH/Zuma is from a series of paintings born during the stillness of the pandemic, when she often drove without a destination to escape the feeling of being stuck at home. “With no reason to rush anywhere and no need to be on time, I stayed in the far-right lane and drove much slower than my usual speed, getting lost in my own thoughts.” The painting renders a highway intersection in color harmonies drawn from Japan’s early Showa period, blending Yumiko’s memories of living in Japan with her new home in California. By blurring these memories and landscapes, PCH/Zuma holds space for impermanence, nostalgia, and our place in the present moment.