Chasely Matmanivong, an instructor of art, started teaching at West Texas A&M University in the spring of 2024. Originally from Alabama, Matmanivong obtained a double bachelor in fine arts and literature from Judson College and has recently received her master in fine arts with an emphasis in painting and photography from WT.

Matmanivong’s interest in art originated when she was a little kid.

“As any little kid, really, you would draw stick figures and stuff like that,” Matmanivong said. “My dad is actually a pretty good artist even though he didn’t pursue it. It just spurred from there. Getting older and realizing what I wanted to do; I’m gonna go get my degree in art, show everybody I can do it, show everybody I can make a career out of it.”

Matmanivong’s favorite aspect of teaching is teaching non-art major students.

“I get to open up their minds and teach them art history, teach them different mediums in art,” Matmanivong said. “It’s been a lot of fun being able to teach non-art majors, and I honestly would want to do it for the rest of my career.”

Outside of teaching, Matmanivong loves to go hiking.

“I love being out in nature,” Matmanivong said. “Being from Alabama, I used to hike almost every day or go kayak every day, but living here, we have no water, so I can’t go kayak.” Matmanivong said jokingly. “So, me and my dog go to Palo Duro pretty often and go hiking.”

Corresponding with her teaching, Matmanivong creates a lot of art pieces, both personally and professionally.

“I am actually in the process of doing a new body of work to give homage to my home state of Alabama using cyanotype.” Matmanivong said. “I have been in contact with a whole bunch of different gin companies that gin their own cotton, so I’ve just been doing a lot of extensive research on the history of cotton in Alabama.”

When pertaining to her personal art pieces, Matmanivong says that emotion is the driving factor for her creations.

“A lot of it is, ‘what have I gone through that other people could have gone through,’” Matmanivong said. “I put what I want on my art pieces, but I do a lot of thinking of, ‘how is this going to help somebody,’ ‘how are people going to feel about it’, not really caring about their opinions, it’s more of, ‘is this going to help them’.”