Back in the early aughts on the Pratt campus, Kim Schifino met Matt Johnson while taking a break from silkscreening, sitting on a wooden bench outside the Engineering Building. Kim recalls seeing Matt walk past and commenting to her friend—the impression was instant—“I admired him. I looked at him and thought he seemed smart.”
That first encounter, which they shared in an interview with Prattfolio this spring, was the beginning of more than a relationship. In 2004, Kim and Matt added another layer, coming together as the music duo Matt and Kim: a fun and frenetic pop punk band whose anthemic melodies energized and inspired young, sweaty crowds in DIY venues all around Pratt. When performing, their exuberance was palpable, Kim furiously drumming and grinning while Matt smashed chords on a keyboard singing at the top of his lungs.
It wasn’t long before they had an RIAA-certified gold record for their 2009 single “Daylight” and a Breakthrough Video Award from the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards for “Lessons Learned.” Since then, the band has gone on to release a steady stream of albums and singles, and perform internationally at sold-out shows and festivals for tens of thousands of fans. At the same time, they’ve stayed true to their DIY roots, with projects like their new band, PG14, drawing from the deep bonds and “happy, or happy adjacent” core of their creative partnership.
The following Q&A has been edited and condensed.
How did you begin collaborating at Pratt? How did you learn that you have shared creative sensibilities?
Matt Johnson: We ended up just being people who worked together on things, and at that point it was my school projects and films and things like that.
Kim Schifino: We did art installations together. You know, typical art-school-kids stuff that you do. But then I saw the Dickies play [at Club Exit, now Terminal 5] and at that show I thought, damn, I want to learn how to play drums. Ian Vanek [BFA Communications Design ’02] from Japanther gave me a hand-me-down kit and I was learning how to play, and Matt had a keyboard he was messing around with, so we just decided to do it together. We weren’t trying to be a band. Basically, Ian forced us to play a show.
MJ: And we couldn’t think of a band name.
KS: So they put us down as Matthew and Kimberly.
How would you describe your roles in the band and how you work together?
MJ: Kim is the muscle. She pushes things over the finish line.
KS: Well, I’d say that Matt’s the genius dreamer. And I’m the doer.
MJ: That’s very kind of you to say. Without Kim, no one would have ever heard any music I had made. I think about the early days: I’d be finishing some songs, and Kim would be booking a whole tour. And the last element of that is that Kim turned out to be such an incredible performer and a fun person to watch.
You’ve spoken about how not touring during the pandemic was challenging for the band, and for you as individuals. How do you support each other through difficult times?
MJ: I think we had one very clear path for a lot of years. Or at least what felt very clear to us: you keep touring, you keep recording and putting out music, you keep trying to do whatever you can. We just never stopped. And that was our life. And it was interesting to have the pandemic break it.
KS: It was tough during the pandemic. I didn’t want to work on music because the world was . . . sad—and I feel like a lot of the Matt and Kim stuff we do is happy, or happy adjacent. I remember Matt, knowing that I always have to kind of be busy, saying, “Did you know MoMA has online art history classes?” So then, basically, I had no time because I was taking seven classes.
“It’s so important to have community in the creative space. . . . You have to find the group that you can interact with and share ideas with and be inspired by them.”
Kim Schifino
While developing your crafts at Pratt, you were also forming all kinds of connections—the one between you both and beyond. How did you find your people at Pratt? And what advice would you give to current students about finding their people?
KS: It’s so important to have community in the creative space. The scene that was happening in Brooklyn in 2006, everyone knew each other, everyone went to each other’s shows, everybody supported each other. You have to find the group that you can interact with and share ideas with and be inspired by them.
MJ: You have to put yourself out there. Similar to exercise, it’s really important. Even if you’re like, “I really just want to stay in, it’s rainy, it’s cold.” You go out and socialize and you’re like, “Oh, I feel like I exercised. That was good. It wasn’t easy to do, but it was good.”
KS: I feel like Pratt had such a strong community compared to other art schools, or schools that we would go to to hang out. Pratt was also great because you could take so many different classes that weren’t part of your study. I took so many printmaking classes as an illustration major.
Photo by Matt Christine
What’s one piece of advice you learned during your time at Pratt that you’d like to share?
MJ: The year I graduated, we started the band. And we went and played at this art camp for middle school kids outside of Boston. I decided beforehand that I was going to give them this advice, and maybe this is my chance to give it again: basically, that creativity is universal.
I hadn’t gone to school for music. I’d gone to school for film, and I had loved photography. The better I could figure out how to take a photo and what made a photo feel balanced and compositionally satisfying, the better I could write a song. They were one and the same. When I built my photo skills, my songwriting got better. And if I built the songwriting skill, my films would get better.
You don’t need to commit to one thing, because all boats rise in the water.
What’s next for you both—anything on the horizon this year that you’re excited about?
KS: Matt asked me, “If you knew this was going to be the last normal year of your life, what would you do?” Matt’s answer was, see friends, go hiking, like, do all this stuff. And I want to finish the PG14 album and short film. Like, I want this done. It’s all I think about now.
MJ: The whole album we made with PG14 is a visual album. Not necessarily in a Beyoncé way, but there’s a whole through story; we have characters and we’re scriptwriting, and we’re building it all in Unreal Engine. But it didn’t come out of a need to reinvent ourselves to make a fresh, new, big plan. Just, “What would we enjoy waking up and working on every day? Even if no one else heard it?”
Related Reading
First Lady Michelle Obama’s College Signing Day Event Features Alumni Matt and Kim
Pratt Institute alumni Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino of the indie pop band Matt and Kim were guests of First Lady Michelle Obama at a National College Signing Day event held at New York City’s Harlem Armory. (June 3, 2016)